


DT Bunny Farm of Requests

by DarkTidings



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, Crossover Pairings, Divorced Rick Grimes, Drabble Collection, Families of Choice, Magical Realism, Psychic Abilities, Random & Short, Rare Pairings, Survival Training, Undercover Missions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:20:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 25,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24736804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkTidings/pseuds/DarkTidings
Summary: Drabbles and short stories that may or may not become larger stories later, from requests made by reviewers.
Comments: 991
Kudos: 43





	1. Table of Contents

Since I'm getting a lot of questions about what story might come next, here's an update, with the original list of requests still intact below it. Currently, I'm finishing a series that had 3 parallel stories, but I'm narrowing down my story list at least temporarily to tighten my posting schedule back to 10-14 days instead of the 21-25 days currently running. Additionally, I'm in the middle of job hunting as my current job is being phased out. I work in the accounting field, so a new position may take up more time and hours than my current one, especially in the spring. We shall see!

My top three that I have solid ideas/plans for are:

> 1) Shane/Carol Grady AU. It's not formally outlined yet, but inkribbon and I exchanged about 75 emails (not kidding in the least) discussing the plot of that one.
> 
> 2) Mute Beth Grady AU. It's going to be one of the darker ones, sadly, so I've got to do a lot of planning to carry it through correctly. As Beth is not a POV character and Eugene is, it also fits with me wishing to have POVs from characters less populated in fandom and putting more Eugene fic out there (he's my personal favorite character in the show).
> 
> 3) Law & Order SVU crossover. I'm hesitant here because I already have two non-ZA stories going (and one is a series that will probably continue for at least a year of stories), along with one that I planned and posted a beginning to (The Hallmark Georgia chapter in this Bunny Farm). I may have it wait until the Rick/Amanda story finishes.
> 
> Alternates for #3 would be:  
>  3a) Dixon AU: Daryl/Michonne married prior to the ZA, but Michonne separated from the Dixons (and Andre) prior to the quarry.
> 
> 3b) Virginia AU: This one I really like, but it's a massive hodgepodge of subpairings, and I'm not sure I want to tackle it yet. It has a lot of potential to get as snarled up as RBM if I'm not careful.
> 
> 3c) Lost Deputy AU: Shane/Eugene, Bethyl. This one really ought to wait until I close out a Lost Deputy story, but it intrigues me as a really unique pairing to pull off. I'd also like to put a bit of my spin on Bethyl at least once.

Please see Note at end about my posting procress!

Sometimes I like a break from the bigger stories I'm working on. I'm viewing this as a request line collection, probably all 500-2000 words. Some bunnies may be later turned into longer pieces.

Feel free to request TWD shorts: genfic or romance, non-ZA included. 

I reserve the right to decline a request if it's something I can't write.

I may decline if I feel can't do the POV justice (Dale and Andrea are two POVs that baffle me still, and I struggle with Maggie). If it is a pairing, canon or otherwise, that I don't see as viable, I may tweak canon or offer a non-ZA story instead to exclude canon. Shane and Lori as a long-term couple are a hard no in _most_ TWD canon. I also have problems with canon Rick and Michonne. I will not write _canon aged_ Bethyl at a stage where she is still a teenager, and honestly, there are a lot of writers for the pairing, so I prefer to concentrate on other characters that aren't as popular.

I will decline for any of the following: noncon, dubcon, BDSM, incest pairings, underage/adult sexual pairings (16-plus with a young adult in a non-sexual relationship might be considered, but typically not), ABO, mpreg, anti-Shane, anti-Merle, anti-Lori, anti-Eugene, crossovers with any fandom I am not familiar with. In my stories, Negan is a violent, psychopathic sex predator who will always get his just desserts.

I do not write the canon LGBT characters as heterosexual, but I do write LGBT romances and slash/femmeslash, so those requests are welcomed.

Best results may be to leave the request open ended and I give no time spans on when inspiration may hit for a request.

I'll post a table of contents here as I go. Italicized Chapters in the ToC are ones that have separate stories now.

Chapter 2, Anchor in Time: Shane/Carol, non-requested plot bunny, modified time travel ZA

 _Chapter 3, Life is Unknowable: Rick/OC, requested expansion of nurse's story by DieAvocado and Veronica  
Chapter 4, Life is Unthinkable: Shane/Lori, requested by Valleygirl and GoingInMotions (and others)  
_ *** Ch 3 & 4 are parallel stories for the Grenade AU.***

_Chapter 5, We Are Made Wise: Shane alone after the farm with Carl, Beth, and Sophia, requested by FreddyIsComingForYou_

_Chapter 6, Swim in Strange Water: Beth escapes the Grady car and finds Shane. Eventual Shane/Beth. Requested by Yohoho_

_Chapter 7, Time to Walk: Shane leaves the Farm and ends up at Hilltop. Eventual Shane/Jesus. Requested by Dark Tidings' Spawn_

_Chapter 8, Dragons Can Be Beaten: Bite immunity featuring Shane and Beth, where Eugene has the cure. Requested by TWD_BethG, also incorporates IfWishesWereHorses Cure request_

_Chapter 9, At Your Own Reckoning: A divorced Rick meets Amanda Shepherd as she hunts dirty cops in Atlanta PD. Requested by inkribbon_

_Chapter 10, Love Mingled with Grief: Beth's psychic gift feels more like a curse, even as her birth mother struggles past the death the Wizarding World to find her daughter. Requested by DirectorDanvers_

Chapter 11: Hallmark Georgia - romance novel style series, non-ZA, preview in chapter and requests still being taken on the chapter.

Fulfilled in non-Bunny Farm Stories:

Jacqui/Merle (Valleygirl) - _The Violence of Coarser Souls_ will include this pairing as a ZA  
Alternate quarry leadership (Veronica) - The Grenade series will include Lori as co-leader to primary leader.  
Glenn/OC (Kylesmom) - The Grenade series has Glenn/OC.  


Pending:

Merle/Michonne (Beachgirl25)  
Merle/Carol, non-ZA/Sophia (Valleygirl)  
Daryl/Carol, non-ZA/Sophia (Valleygirl)  
Jacqui/Jim, non-ZA (Valleygirl)  
Jacqui/Merle, non-ZA (Valleygirl)  
Shane/Lori, non-ZA (Valleygirl)  
Daryl/OC, marriage proposal (heathermh1998)  
Merle/OC, marriage proposal (heathermh1998)  
Alternate quarry leadership (Veronica) (will end up as an ongoing theme)  
Dixon survival lessons (Veronica)  
TWD/Leverage crossover - Parker vs Quarry Females (Veronica)  
TWD/Sentinel crossover - Blair vs Quarry (Veronica)  
TWD/Leverage crossover - duality story: Parker finds Merle, Elliott & Alec find Sophia... (Robyn.Girl.Wonder.93)  
Rick dies in the hospital (IfWishesWereHorses)  
Shane kills Rick (at Randall dropoff - or in field) - (IfWishesWereHorses)  
Andrea dies instead of Amy (IfWishesWereHorses)  
AU Reversing Judith and Carl's ages (IfWishesWereHorses)  
Andrea kills the Governor (IfWishesWereHorses)  
TWD/FTWD crossover, Dixons at Camp Cackleberry (Noxxia)  
Greene Family AU (flip who survived) (Veronica)  
"Invasion of the Hillbillies" - large Dixon clan at the quarry and the culture shocks to follow (Veronica)  
Judith born pre-ZA/Single Dad Shane as Quarry leader (Veronica)  
Daryl/Beth with Beth aged up, post prison, with Judith and Dog (Bethylguest)  
Daryl & the Heiress AU (inkribbon)  
Jenner and Eugene cure probability story (WeepingLoveGrass)  


** One Shot Requests: **

Beth_TWD Requests:  
AU of “Swim in Strange Water” Shane & Biscuit saving Beth from The Claimers (who ended up being the ones that took Beth), before they would do real damage to Beth.  
AU Rick’s group finds Crossbow!Beth at museum in 9x01. No Carol & Daryl finding Grady car, solo Beth escape. Reunion Scene.  
AU Beth goes to rescue Maggie & Glenn from Woodbury on her own and is captured and used in Maggie's torture. Rescue Scene, plus Angry Maggie Aftermath.  
AU Beth survives Grady. Beth & Daryl friendship scene. Beth & Maggie Reunion.  
AU Beth's suicide attempt at the farm. Shane sits with Beth instead of Andrea and helps her avoid the attempt. Tug the Heartstrings. 

** Detailed Requests: **

Detailed requests may incorporate shorter requests made above, such as pairing requests, once evolved into a story. Many people's requests often mesh well together.

Greene Family AU (requested by RandomRequest:  
Primary POVs: Daryl & Shane (as group leaders).  
Pairings: Maggie/Daryl, Shawn/Rosita, Carl/Beth, Shane/Lori.  
Background & Requests: Shawn (26), Maggie (24), Beth (14), no other from Greene Farm. Beth's mother died in childbirth with her - Mama Maggie. Please include a young border collie as Beth's pet. Carl is 15.  
Plot Storyline: Author's Choice.  


Dixon AU: (requested by Beachgirl25)  
Primary POVs: Daryl & Merle.  
Pairing(s): Daryl/Michonne.  
Background & Requests: Daryl (park ranger) and Michonne (environmental lawyer) married prior to ZA. Daryl is Andre's father. Daryl, Merle, and Andre camping at ZA, Michonne working in the city. Include Lori thinking the two rednecks should not be raising a biracial toddler and attempts to mother Andre. Both men think Michonne died in bombing of Atlanta. Merle's Rooftop Tantrum spawned to save Michonne. Michonne prevents Merle from being left behind.  
Plot Storyline: Author's Choice.  


Dixon AU: (requested by Beachgirl25)  
Primary POVs: Daryl & Merle.  
Pairing(s): Author's Choice ( _DT Note: likely Merle/Michonne_ ).  
Background & Requests: Daryl and Merle are separated before the ZA. Only Daryl arrives at Quarry and ends up as co-leader with Shane. Merle is in Atlanta Refugee Camp and meets Michonne and Andre. Merle & Michonne find Sophia and Andrea when they are separated from the group.  
Plot Storyline: Author's Choice, to include eventual merging of the two groups.  


Dixon AU: (requested by Veronica)  
Primary POVs: Merle & Carol (maybe Daryl)  
Pairing(s): Merle/Carol  
Background & Requests: Ed loses badly to Merle in a game of high stakes poker and instead of offering up the deed to his house, he offers up his wife instead. Merle figures it will save a woman from his mother's fate and accepts. Carol arrives with Sophia in tow. The Dixon brothers end up with good food, a clean house, and a very curious little girl fascinated with rough rednecks instead of repelled by them. Survival training (with or without ZA). Gruff, tentatively smitten!Merle. Gun shy!Carol. Confused&Baffled!Daryl. Lots of southern cuisine. Happy mother and child.  


HP Crossover AU: (requested by JCJ58, taken from DT outlines)  
Primary POVs: Luna  
Pairing(s): Luna/Merle  
Background & Requests: Post TWD Season 2, Not Fully Epilogue Compliant HP. When the rescuers reach the rooftop, Merle is missing, with only a note spray painted on the rooftop - Finders Keepers. Shane goes missing after the CDC, and Sophia is lost in the woods, but not in the barn. As the post-farm group nears starvation during winter, they come upon a pregnant woman witch and the presumed dead Sophia. Their safe haven includes many of those thought lost to the group. Magic is underpowered and wonky, no super fix-its. Harry has his children and Teddy. No Ginny in story.  


HP Crossover AU: (requested by JCJ58, taken from DT outlines)  
Primary POVs: Luna  
Pairing(s): Luna/Daryl, Harry/Merle  
Background & Requests: AU TWD Season 2, Not Fully Epilogue Compliant HP. When Rick's group arrives at the farm, they aren't the first campers staying with the Greenes. To their surprise, Merle is happily among the eccentric strangers, who are introduced as his family. Harry has his children and Teddy. No Ginny in story. The doctor that operates on Carl is the very pregnant witchy wife of Daryl Dixon. Magic is underpowered and wonky, no super fix-its.  


Greene Farm AU: (requested by KungFu1010)  
Primary POV: Merle & Beth  
Pairings: Shawn/Michonne, Merle/Maggie, Beth/Duane  
Background & Request: Rick’s group never ran into the Greene family, until much later. So we see how the Greene Family would survive without them. Shawn is alive in this, and Annette but not Jimmy, Otis and Patricia. So just the main family. Maybe no Hershel (you decide). The farm does fall. So they have to try and survive. Bring in Morgan, Duane, Michonne, and Merle. Merle comes in before the farm falls. Maggie is oldest (established as a vet working with Hershel), Shawn the middle. Make Beth around 14-15. Age Duane up. 

Job Swap AU: (requested by Veronica)  
Primary POV: TBD, likely Carol, others  
Pairings: TBD (Shane/Carol or Merle/Carol)  
Background & Request: Instead of the usual character jobs, swap them around. Carol as quarry leader. Carol is a deputy, prior military experience. She served with Daryl in the service (Daryl also deputy, her partner). Ed is an ex but long ago (served a prison sentence for DV, maybe not Carol, maybe not Sophia's father). Rick is rich boy turned vegan organic hobby farmer. Lori gave up art career to support family in blue collar job apprenticed from her dad. Merle is a kindergarten teacher (and guru for quarry kidlets). Jacqui as a doctor. Shane is an interpretive park ranger (state or fed) working with kids and survival techniques. Possible single dad Shane (an older Judith as his child, not with Lori). Shane & Daryl friendship. Same background and personal stories but overcoming any issues wherein those exist to become successful, happy individuals. 

Harlequin Rides Again AU (requested by Veronica)  
Primary POV: Merle & Carol  
Pairings: Merle/Carol  
Background & Request: Non-ZA or pre-ZA. College professor Merle. Small town setting. Romance and successful personal overcoming of past domestic abuse. Flip Carol and Merle's backgrounds (hers child abuse, his DV). 

Harlequin Rides Again AU (requested by Veronica)  
Primary POV: Merle & Carol  
Pairings: Merle/Carol, Daryl/Male (Glenn?)  
Background & Request: Carol is the newly elected sheriff of Dixons' home county, a divorced single mom of Sophia. Merle is the reformed addict and ex-badboy, single dad to twin, preteen girls (mom OC or canon, either is good). He expects a no nonsense pain in the ass new Sheriff, but gets a no nonsense, firm but gentle pain in his heart. Mountain small town setting. Family of Choice/Found Family. Slice of life. Slow-building romance. Overcoming of troubled past and sorta regular badmouthing by neighbors. Making lemonade of your lemons to become a happy, fulfilled individual. 

Teen Wolf Inspired AU (requested by Veronica)  
Primary POV: Carol and/or Dixon brothers  
Pairings: TBD (not required)  
Background & Request: Merle and Daryl as Beta werewolves. Will Dixon was their abusive alpha, but killed by walkers early on. Carol bitten at some point and becomes Alpha (possible as True Alpha, maybe an inherited spark - make her an accidental Beta of Will Dixon unknown to the brothers). Carol ends up the Dixon Alpha. Weres immune to virus but can still be swarmed by walker herds. Enhanced abilities/senses shown as both good and bad in ZA (physically escaping easier, never lose weapons, but senses such as scent can be overwhelmed). Possible squeamish, fussy werewolves. No Rooftop Merle (addiction difficult for weres) or if Rooftop, no amputation (escape once unseen by shifting to break cuffs). 

TWD/TWD Video Game AU Crossover (requested by WolfieWalkerPupp)  
Primary POV: Beth, Michonne, and Shane  
Pairings: Michonne/Morgan, Shane/Carol, and eventually Clementine/Beth  
Background Pairing(s): Lee/Rosita, Maggie/Glenn, Rick/Sasha, Tyreese/Karen  
Friendship Focuses: Carol & Michonne, Shane & Morgan, Lee & Morgan, Rosita & Beth  
Background & Request: When the Farm falls, Beth (14) is separated and finds refuge with Clementine (14) in her treehouse. Weeks later, they meet up with Michonne, Morgan, and Shane (banished from the Farm prior to the fall), who rescue the girls from the Governor (Clementine nearly killed by Gov's men, Beth nearly kidnapped as she resembles Penny). Carol and Lori are separated from the Farm refugees just prior to the Prison, and Lori dies in the surgery to save Judith, leaving Carol with the baby. Lee finds Carol and Judith in a remote cabin. They find Rosita after she is separated from Abraham and Eugene.  
  
Prison vs Governor arc still occurs, but does alert that group that Beth's alive. Maggie, Tyreese, & Bob encounter Beth's group post-Prison. Drama due to Maggie wanting guardianship of Beth from Morgan/Michonne, and Beth runs away to encounter Claimers but is saved from Len claiming her.  
  
Rick's group encounters Sasha and Tyreese after losing Carol and Lori. Tyreese/Karen assume guardianship of Sophia. Rick and Carl find Sasha post-Prison. Karen, Sophia, and Daryl escape together. Glenn finds Tara, and later Abraham and Eugene. Groups all reunite before or after Terminus (TBD). 

Lost Deputy AU: (requested by EmmaPeel1)  
Primary POVs: Shane (& Connie)  
Pairing(s): Shane/Connie  
Background & Requests: Shane stays behind with Jim while the others go ahead to the CDC. Expecting to be delayed a few hours, he helps a woman nearly overwhelmed by walkers. Michonne and Andre found Merle, suffering from heatstroke (not cocaine), having escaped the cuffs without amputation. By the time they make it to the CDC, the building is destroyed and they think everyone is dead. They seek refuge in a community on the coast named Coalport, where Shane meets the investigative journalist who once turned King County on its ear due to a corrupt sheriff.

Rick's group heads toward Fort Benning. (Full details of canon AU to establish later.) Ends up traveling north after finding Abraham's group. The two groups will end up in different Virginia communities, meeting at last to deal with the Negan problem.

Shane doesn't know about Judith. Sophia, Beth, and Duane also live. Michonne knows ASL (Andre is deaf) and teaches Merle and Shane. Beth, Judith, Glenn, and Tara reunite after prison. Carol and Sophia save the others from Terminus. Glenn's group thinks they died there and ends up in Coalport. Hershel, Merle, Lori, etc live.

Lost Deputy AU: (requested by KungFu101 and DemonSpawn [aka BetaDaughter])  
Primary POVs: Shane & Eugene  
Pairing(s): Shane/Eugene, Daryl/Beth  
Background & Requests: Separated from the others at the CDC, Shane is unable to find them and finds Fort Benning destroyed. He drifts and settles to live on a boat on West Point Lake. Abraham's group is traveling, seeking any remnants of the US military. Separated from his group at the Alabama/Georgia border, Eugene is saved by Shane.

Months pass and the duo decide to travel east for a change of scenery, coming across the destroyed prison. They find the funeral home that Beth, Daryl, and Judith took refuge in. Unable to find the others, they seek a safe haven for Judith's sake. Collect others in small island community over a year (who?).

Paul finds them while looking for a place for people to flee Negan and his Saviors. Rick's survivors have merged with Abraham's and ended up in the Negan mess.

Deaged Daryl (23) raised by half-brother Merle. Oblivious boys in love. Merle lives, Hershel, Lori, etc do not. Maggie finds Beth's group, thinking Glenn and others died at Terminus.

Soulmates AU: (requested by pegasaurus)  
Primary POVs: Varies  
Pairing(s): Beth/Rick (with Beth aged up appropriately), Merle/Rosita, Abraham/Princess  
Background & Requests: _This will likely be funny, short, maybe even crack!fic style as a one-shot series when it is posted._  
The wildfire virus began as a soulmate project led by an initiative that wanted to reduce divorce rates, etc. Intended just to illuminate whether someone has a soulmate, it's released into the wild and mutates to the ZA virus. First names only, in the handwriting of the partner on a specific matching body part, like the calf or collarbone, with colors. Definitely have something dramatic happen when their partner dies. The closer to the heart that the names are, the closer the bond. Imagine having a soulmark on your knee, and then in the ZA it changes, and a new one shows up on your sternum or left shoulder. Especially traumatizing if they thought they had already met their soulmate. Multiple marks (for triads or Vs), but that get tricky with the closer to the heart match issues. Some might want to insist only the closest one 'counts'.  
  
_Please don't request pairings for this story - it will go into the Bunny Farm queue for requests eventually._

Greene Family AU: (requested by Powerof_charmed )  
Primary POVs: Eugene & Beth  
Pairing(s): Eugene/Paul, Beth/Rosita, Maggie/Merle  
Background & Requests: The farm is overrun early, and only Beth (19) and Maggie (32) escape. Captured by Randall's group, Beth's near-rape is prevented by two separate groups coming to the rescue. Combining forces for safety, they have to come to terms with Abe's group nearly fracturing over Eugene's lie, and Merle and Shane's deepset need to find their missing family.  
  
Abe, Rosita, and Eugene arrive in Georgia a year early. Paul rescued Merle from the roof and later found Shane after he was separated from the others after the CDC. Eventually, they find the prison before Andrew's sabotage and reunite with Rick's group and bring them back to their better location.  
  
Veterinarian Maggie. Culinary student Beth. Abraham's kids live. 

Virginia AU: (requested by Beth_TWD)  
Primary POVs: Michonne, Eugene, Ezekiel  
Pairing(s): Michonne/Connie, Paul/Eugene, Ezekiel/Shane  
Background Pairing(s): Abraham/Rosita, Rick/Maggie, former Rick/Lori, Jimmy/Amy, Patricia/Otis, Sophia/Carl, Daryl/Sasha, Carol/Tyreese, Hershel/Annette, Morgan/Jenny, Beth/Henry, Tara/Denise, Glenn/Kelly  
Include: Beth & Kelly friendship; aged up Sophia, Carl, Henry; Paul/Michonne sibling friendship; K9 dogs bonding with kids; eventual puppies!; Judith is Rick's daughter; Merle mentors Sophia  
Background & Requests: Michonne & Andre find Beth after the farm falls. Michonne has a retired K9 German Shepherd (Echo). Story opens months later, after Michonne searched unsuccessfully for Beth's group but had to stop because of two children to care for. They find Shirewilt (in Georgia), with Noah's family intact, but Noah & Father gone. Paul is in residence at Shirewilt and develops a friendship with Michonne. Connie and Kelly end up in Shirewilt instead of Magna's group. Shirewilt is eventually overrun by Wolves, but Michonne's group escapes (her, Connie, Paul, the girls, Noah's brothers).  
  
Eugene's group ended up at The Kingdom (no cure or already resolved with Ezekiel's counsel), and Michonne's group on the road is found by Abraham's outrider team of The Kingdom when they get into a bit of trouble. Shane was shot instead of Rick, and when the hospital is abandoned, his nurse Jenny stays behind to care for him (along with her family). After Shane wakes, they find the K9 he was training to work with, a Belgian Malinois named Ace, is prowling the rural property around the sheriff's department. They later encounter Eugene's group. The cure debacle happens on the road, and they eventually end up at The Kingdom. Shane and Morgan end up part of the outrider team with Abraham, Rosita, and Eugene.  
  
_Background Detail for Rick's Group (not in story):_ Rick leads the quarry group + Greenes through most of the events (minus the Rooftop and Amy dying) of Seasons 1-4 (no Glenn/Maggie). Lori dies in childbirth, leading to eventual Rick/Maggie due to her caring for Judith. Merle is banished instead of Carol, later saving some of the group with Carol's leadership at Terminus (finding Carol, Tyreese, and Judith prior). Rick's group (Rick, Maggie, Carl, Hershel, Annette, Patricia, Jimmy, Otis, Carol, Daryl, Sophia, Noah) finds the destroyed Shirewilt, with Sophia (16) being the captive at Grady instead of Beth (Sophia survives). Beth is thought to be dead, but Maggie finds Shawn's custom made rosary that Beth inherited left behind at Shirewilt.  
  
Glenn & Tara separated from Rick's group after prison and eventually find The Kingdom. They go as part of the negotiation group to Alexandria & Hilltop to oppose Negan when he moves into the area and contacts The Kingdom first. Reunions abound, the Saviors aren't as big a group as before, and Negan is assassinated when he attempts to subjugate Alexandria. 

Dixon AU (requested by Kylesmom)  
Primary POVs: Glenn, Daryl, Merle, Michonne, maybe Shane  
Primary Pairings: Daryl/Glenn, Shane/Rosita, Merle/Michonne, Aaron/Eric  
Background Pairings: TBD  
Group Changes: In Glenn's group: Glenn, Ally (16), the 3 children from daycare Caleb (3), AJ (16 mo), and Cindy (4 mo), Michonne, Andre (3), Denise, Noah (17) and his twin brothers David and Matthew(13), Shawn (19), Beth (16), Jimmy (16), Duane (10). LOL, basically Glenn rescued a lot of kids. Also, Turbo and Chaos, two German Shepherd puppies Glenn rescued from walkers. Glenn and Michonne group leaders.  
  
Daryl's group: his huge extended family (incl Merle), with a couple of dogs, Carol, twins Sophia and Henry (10), Amy (18), Shane, Carl (12), Judith (10 mo), Jim and his two boys (6 and 4), T-Dog, Jacqui, Aaron, Eric, Gracie (6 mo), Eugene, Rosita, Tara, Megan (8), and Jesus. Shane and Daryl group leaders.  
Background & Requests:  
Rick really does die at hospital, and when Shane leaves him to get his family, Lori's been bit and is dying. Shane gets their two children out. Duane and his parents made it to Atlanta, and they were killed. Glenn found him hiding in a back room of a store. Amy was with her sister and rescued by an older man, but both were killed by people. Amy escaped with her sister's help. Ed was killed by walkers as they were leaving house, after he loaded up the car. Carol grabbed her two children and left. She found Amy walking down the street crying, and gave her a ride. Jimmy is Shawn and Beth's cousin. When farm was overrun, they are the only ones to escape. They had heard Atlanta was a safe zone and drove there. They got surrounded in their truck and Glenn distracted the walkers and rescued them.

Ally, who lived with her mother is Merle's daughter - later grouped with Glenn.  
See Details: https://archiveofourown.org/comments/346896214

Clan Dixon AU  
Requested by: WeepingLoveGrass’s request for competent Clan Dixon and Merle papa to small fry, RainbowsandSunshine’s young Beth request, Veronica’s "Invasion of the Hillbillies", a large Dixon clan at the quarry and the culture shocks to follow. Also Veronica’s Single Dad Shane request.  
Primary POV(s): Merle  
Pairing(s): Merle/OC  
Background Pairing(s): Rick/Lori, Hershel/Annette, Otis/Patricia, others TBD  
Include: Dixon first responder careers. Retain redneck/hillbilly background. Positive Biker Culture. Merle as father to small children and happily married to OC. Beth age 3-6, adopted into Greene family. All Greenes live. No Shane/Lori affair. No Ed Peletier.  
Background & Requests:  
This will feature a vastly AU Dixon Clan, retaining some of the basic background, but be more like Repair Broken Men for going off script decades back. Instead of being raised by an abusive father after their mother died, Merle and Daryl’s paternal great grandmother seized custody and raised them. The feisty old lady is still ruling her large family, which includes a few other grown grandchildren by the quarry. All the grandkids have jobs in the public service sector: police, fire, EMT, nurse.

Initial impressions go like the Dixons vs the quarry did in the show, except on “OH CRAP” scale because there are so damned many of them. No Ed, with Carol breaking free years earlier.

The Greene family doesn’t stick around the farm, but ends up at the Refugee Center in Atlanta because Maggie took Beth there. Beth is Maggie’s adopted daughter, born to her childhood best friend who died of complications when Beth was born. The Greenes escape the Refugee Center along with part of the Dixons when it falls, along with Michonne & Andre.

Will reuse some characters from Repair Broken Men as Dixon Clan members, such as Tim, Bryce, and Christopher. Also use T.C. Callahan from The Nightshift.  
See Details: https://archiveofourown.org/comments/351814246

Law & Order SVU crossover (requested by Hachiko_loyal)  
Primary POVs: Shane & Benson  
Primary Pairings: Shane/Benson, Michonne/Shawn  
Background Pairings: Rick/Lori, Hershel/Annette, Maggie/Rosita, Daryl/Connie  
Includes: Established background pairings and Michonne/Shawn. Shane as single parent to Judith (6). Benson as adoptive mother to Noah (4). Beth as Judith's babysitter. Rick retired from sheriff's department after becoming disabled after the shooting that left him comatose for weeks. Shawn as Andre's father. Paul is local PD, Shawn a sheriff's deputy.  
Background & Requests: Rollins is cousin to Annette Greene, and while she's on vacation visiting family in Georgia, her teenage cousin Beth goes missing. She asks Benson to come help, as the local cops are competent but could use the other woman's expertise of years working in SVU, because the state and federal authorities insist Beth is a runaway.  
  
Beth's sister-in-law, Michonne, is the police chief of the small county seat town for King County, and she teams with the local Sheriff (Shane) and game warden (Daryl) to make sure no stone goes unturned in finding Beth. As many of the cops involved have ties to the Greene family in some way, Sergeant Benson finds herself welcomed in a way she didn't expect as an outsider, especially by the blunt tongued local Sheriff.  
  
Endgame Motive: Beth is kidnapped by a group upset over moves toward inclusivity in King County, including LGBT officers being hired, Beth's own sister being married to a woman, and Beth's activism at the local high school. 

Greene Farm AU (requested by YellowMellow )  
Primary POV: Beth  
Pairings: No Beth Pairing  
Background Pairing(s): TBD, not a focus  
Background & Request: Two alternate requests:  
Beth on a high school field trip at the time the outbreak went widely viral. Couldn't get home and separated from the student group. Later meets Morgan and Duane, who did not encounter Rick.  
  
or  
Beth is separated after the farm, running off from the house after a fight with Maggie (possibly regarding her suicide attempt). Meets either Michonne & Andre or Morgan & Duane.  


TWD/TWD Video Game AU Crossover (requested by WalkerBethG )  
Primary POV: Beth  
Pairings: No Beth Pairing  
Background Pairing(s): TBD, not a focus  
Friendship Focuses: Beth & Clementine  
Background & Request: Clementine (Season 2 Game age, 11), Beth (12), Maggie (19), Shawn (mid 20s).  
Shawn brings Lee and Clementine to the farm, a year before Rick's group. Walker attack causes Shawn to be bitten when Lee saves Duck instead. Hershel banishes Lee, Clem, and Kenny's family. Annette is bitten by Shawn afterward. This is why Hershel is so uptight and strict with Rick’s group staying on the Farm.  
  
Farm is overrun, and Beth separated, solo for a month except a stray dog she befriends. Beth saves Clementine, and the girls revive their old friendship. They meet with Morgan and Duane at some point prior to reuniting with Rick's group in Alexandria. _Primarily a friendship story for Beth & Clementine!_

Post-Farm AU: (requested by xXQueenofDragonsXx)  
Primary POVs: Lori & Shane  
Pairing(s): Lori/Ezekiel, others TBD or background (likely rare pair)  
Background & Requests:  
Lori, Carl, and Sophia are separated after the farm from the rest of the group. A series of encounters drives them further and further north to the Kingdom. Ezekiel is fascinated by the pregnant woman who kept herself and two kids alive for months. The herd arrived as Shane is meeting with Rick, Daryl, and Glenn about Randall's 'escape'. Rick and Shane get separated on foot, not finding the rest of the group for a few weeks, thinking Lori and kids were with group. Group thought Lori and kids with Rick and Shane. Oops! Prison occurs, but Merle, Michonne, and Shane combine forces to ambush Governor. Prison falls due to illness, not tank. Group travels north as Noah's escort. Kingdom found after meeting Jesus.

Grady AU (planned with inkribbon)  
Primary POVs: Shane, Carol, Lori, Rick (?), Daryl (?)  
Pairing: Shane/Carol  
Background Pairing(s): endgame Lori/Daryl, Rick/Amanda  
Background AU: Carol and Ed have three children: Benjamin (17) and twins Henry & Sophia (13). He still dies at the quarry after the beating from Shane.  
Background & Request: At the CDC, Carol returns to the rec room to retrieve a book and interrupts Shane's pleading with Lori before it goes too far. Thinking over what she overheard, Carol decides that if Lori's foolish enough to discard the man who kept them all alive for a man barely aware of their new world, she's happy to pick up the pieces. She and her kids can't learn what they need to survive this world without someone to teach them, after all. Following Shane into the shower, she presents her offer: he obviously wants a family, and she has one in need of a husband and father.

In the chaos of escaping the CDC, Shane, Carol, and her children are cut off from the rest of the group and presumed lost. Lingering around Atlanta to try to find their people, Shane comes across a cop he knows from cross-agency training classes. Recruited to help the good cops in Grady overthrow Gorman before his corruption takes hold of the whole place, A much different Grady emerges from the 'housecleaning', and Shane is installed as Dawn Lerner's second in command. Being at Grady is a good thing, because at 45, Carol's shocked to find herself pregnant and grateful there's no way in hell for the baby to be Ed's. A young blonde teenager found on patrol fits into their family, and runs riot on the makeshift "farm" the Grady residents have set up... Beth takes no arguments in setting up her own little farm in the hospital upper levels.

Rick's group wanders until they encounter part of the Greenes - whose farm was overrun by a herd and scattered the family. They're mourning the loss of their youngest member and join up with Rick for the safety of a larger group. Settling down in some rural cabins, they begin to prepare for winter and a surprise baby on the way, but even without Shane to cause strife, Rick and Lori boil over and the marriage ends in tatters, with help from Andrea. The need for supplies to prepare for a potential c-section leads a team to cross paths with the Grady cops and an invitation to the better secured community that has actual doctors - and one hell of a surprise for both the Grimes and Greene families.

Post Prison Beth AU (requested by KungFu101)  
Primary POV: Beth  
Pairings: Canon pairings up until the time jump in What Comes After (S9 E5); No Beth Pairing  
Canon Issues: Canon deaths until S9 E5, with small Grady exceptions, Carl (close call, not bite), and Glenn (taken by Negan and presumed dead until after All Out War). No Whisperers for the season 9 episodes used in later chapters. ( _This is a single exception for my "don't kill the child characters" - no requests will be taken for new ones!_  
Background & Request: Beth and Judith are separated from the others after the prison and presumed dead. Desperate to care for a baby on her own, Beth can't wander endlessly looking, despite finding a German Shepherd that protects them both. It has to be somewhere inaccessible and quiet, so she does what seems to be a crazy thing and heads into Atlanta, aiming for a high rise for sound insulation and access to supplies.

After spotting the Grady cops abandon someone to die and take a young woman in, Beth avoids them completely even after their leadership coup. With just her and Judith to provide for, she manages to survive for three years, outlasting Grady's fall and finally taking a risk to accept two survivors from the hospital because the woman (Joan) is pregnant.

Eventually, they come across a survivor that left Virginia and hear about community leaders that sound strangely like Beth's old group. They travel north, seeking Beth's sister and Judith's family, unaware of Rick's disappearance. Rescuing Magna's group, they encounter Aaron's group in the woods, and Aaron brings them all in because of the children in Beth's group.

Michonne doesn't recognize Beth after so many years, but Beth recognizes her and isn't happy with her behavior (Carl is visiting the Kingdom). At Hilltop, when Carol, Daryl, and Henry arrive, Carol meets Judith playing with other children and is led to Beth. Beth's identity revealed and Carl brought to reunite with his sister.

Meanwhile, Morgan finds an amnesiac Rick on his travels and guides him home.

Post Grady Beth AU (requested by KungFu101)  
Title: _Learn the Heart's Song_  
Primary POV: Amanda & Eugene  
Pairings: Some canon pairings, Eugene/Connie, eventual end game Beth/Kelly, No Amanda Pairing  
Canon Issues: Canon deaths until the prison's fall, including Hershel, Merle, and Lori. Time from prison fall to reunion is about 6 months, starting right before Rick beats Pete (S5E15). **No Negan**  
Themes: Connie & Amanda as big sisters to Beth. Beth adopted by stray Akita. Make the story less about romantic love and more about familial love. Beth can't sing anymore, so her new family sings for her. _To love a person is to learn the song that is in their heart, and to sing it to them when they have forgotten - Arne Garborg_  
Background & Request: Daryl & Carol never see the Grady car, so Beth is left at Grady. Gorman damages Beth's throat during his attack, but Amanda intervenes, shooting Gorman as she finds Beth severely injured and Joan dead in Dawn's office. When Dawn attempts to justify Gorman's behavior, Amanda kills her as well, judging she's beyond redemption. Although Edwards says Beth's voice should return once her throat heals, her panic attacks lead Amanda to take her to try to find her family, leaving Lamson in charge of Grady. Beth heals but doesn't speak (Gorman called her 'Songbird' during the attack...) 

Eugene runs away after Abe's beating. He saves Amanda's life mostly by accident, but leads her and Beth to the old church, where they find the map. Eugene teaches them both sign language, while Beth tries to teach them to hunt. They travel north to find Noah's home and find that he's laid his family to rest. Lydia (9) is found in a camp of the dead, protected by a dying Gamma. The five of them find the small settlement where Connie's group is living. When the town falls, Amanda leads the group to Alexandria, as she's met Aaron before. 

Conflict between Amanda's group and Rick's, as they don't think most bothered to look for Beth hard enough. Amanda comes into conflict with Abe over Eugene as well. Rick's place as lawman of Alexandria not as stable or assured with a second cop... 

If you don't want to comment a request, feel free to email me: darkertidings @ gmail .com

**Posting Process Note**

One thing people get concerned with is how many stories I have live and how often I post. I tend to be a prolific writer - 582k words for Repair Broken Men, which started in late 2019 - attests to that. Even on days that I post no chapter or just one chapter, I've probably written anywhere from 4-5k words that aren't immediately posted.

Due to that volume, yes, I do have a lot going on. I won't put one series/story on hold in favor of the others, so if you find the volume confusing, my best suggestion is to pick a favorite or two and follow those. You can always circle back and binge read others later. But since I have a variety of readers who have very different favorites, choosing one story over the other will inevitably leave someone out. I don't think I could pick favorites among my stories anyway. When I've posted steady chapters of a single story, readers often miss chapters anyway, with the speed in which I complete chapters (the low level of reviewership for RBM versus the other stories isn't a fluke).

That said, I do try to rotate through the stories/series evenly, although sometimes the Muse will lock herself a way and disturb the orderly process so that a story drops out of the queue longer than intended. On average, you should see new chapters for an individual story approximately every 7-14 days.

If you have questions about the process or an individual story or series, please feel free to email me, I'm on gmail as darkertidings and don't mind shooting the breeze about my work, TWD in general, writing in general, or even beta-reading stories (as long as the subject matter aligns with fandoms I'm familiar with and none of my taboos).


	2. Anchor in Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shane responds to a request for help from a girl experiencing prophetic dreams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Genfic, primarily father figure Shane.   
> Eventually Shane/Carol.

Shane sits at his desk, gripping the edges reflexively. The few deputies and staff on duty for the night shift shied away from him. He came into the station because sitting at home isn't an option after Lori pushed him away from the hospital room where his partner lies in a medically induced coma for the past day and a half. 

He feels useless, with no villain left to chase in yesterday's tragedy. He killed the man who'd shot Rick. None of the three survived to the hospital.

Sheila finally approaches hesitantly, a pink message slip in her hand. "Shane?"

He blinks away frustrated tears to look up at her. "Yeah?"

"I know it's about the worst time ever, but there's been a little girl calling all afternoon, begging to talk to you. She seems really distressed, but said she'd only talk to you. 

"I asked her for a call back number, and she said that it wasn't safe to call her house. Apparently, she was calling from a friend's cell phone. I called over to the county where the call was originating from and they sent someone over. The girl with the phone wouldn't say who her friend was at first, but we finally got a name and address. 

"It's been listed under domestic violence suspicion for at least a year now, but the woman won't file charges. No one answered the door, no car in the driveway, but the deputies are thinking someone was home and hiding. They didn't want to ask this of you, not right now, but they're wondering if the girl would be willing to open the door to you. 

"Family seems to move around a lot, so they're thinking the girl may have encountered you in some capacity before and built up trust."

Shane blinks a little at the barrage of words and takes the slip, reading the information. The town is the next county over, less than an hour's drive. As puzzling as it is, going to help out another department is better than sitting here staring at the work area he shared with Rick. 

"I'll go. Worst case scenario, I'll stay the night and go with them to the school tomorrow to see if we can talk to the girl."

He stands, feeling a hundred years old instead of thirty-four, and tucks the paper into the pocket on his uniform shirt. Sheila watches him go, expression mournful as the rest of the sparse staff on duty. 

Sitting down heavily in the car, he feels a feeling of grave wrongness sweeping over him as he takes the spot Rick normally does. At least the mystery of the probably abused little girl will keep him busy while he waits on his partner to wake up.

His prediction that they might have to wait until the next day to approach the girl at school is proven correct. He is glad he swung by his house for a fresh uniform as he stands in Principal Boyles' office, waiting on the arrival of Sophia Peletier. 

He didn't recognize the school photo he was shown, but the girl is only twelve, so depending on how old she was when he crossed paths with her, she might have changed a lot. There are far more domestic violence cases in his career than he cares to think about, especially for a rural county like he works for.

Turning from the window, he sees the principal reappear with a tall-for-her-age blonde girl standing hesitantly by her side. The woman seems reluctant to leave Shane alone with the girl, although they met with the local station's representative, the school resource officer, and the school counselor and come to an agreement. Everyone thinks that if the girl is finally reaching out on what everyone suspects but can't prove, they have to let her trust fall where it may. 

Boyles finally sighs, telling Sophia she'll be in the outer office if she is needed and leaves the office.

Shane studies the too-skinny girl, who stares back at him with haunted eyes. He isn't sure how to start off the conversation, but fortunately for him, she has no such hesitation. 

"You came. You came all the way here," she says, hands gripped into the thin fabric of her shorts so tightly he is afraid she'll tear the material. "I wasn't sure, with what happened to Mr. Grimes."

Ignoring the sharp stab of pain that comes with the memory of Rick being shot, and his condition still not stabilized this morning, he concentrates on the girl. "You needed me specifically, it sounded like. He'd have wanted me to help."

"You're gonna think I'm crazy," she mutters. "But I didn't know a lot of last names and no one else seems to remember me that I can find. I was hoping it was all a really bad dream until the news today about Mr. Grimes."

The deputy frowns. This didn't seem to be about the potential domestic violence situation, not directly, at least. "How about you just tell me, and we'll go from there, sweetheart?"

Sophia takes a deep breath, then touches her side, meeting his gaze. "Was Mr. Grimes shot right here?" 

Shane shudders. That detail hadn't made it into any newscast. "Why are you asking that?"

"Because I've been having awful, terrible dreams and Mr. Grimes being shot was part of it."

"You dreamed about Rick being shot?" he manages, thrown off his game completely now.

"Not the shooting itself, but him being better a lot later. He had a bandage here," she rubs along precisely where Rick's injury is. "But it was mostly healed then. Carl had told me he had died, but everyone was wrong, because he came to the camp after we'd been there a while."

It has become hard to breathe. Is the girl having some sort of psychic episode? Shane scoffed at that sort of thing in the past, even if Grandma Jean told him his non-belief didn't make it any less true. He scrambles for something to say, to not insult a clearly distressed child. "Why did Carl think he was dead, in your dream?"

"In the dreams, the world gets really sick soon. This flu stuff they've been talking about? It starts getting bad this week. The dreams feel like something I lived through. They're so real. 

But in the dream, I remember Mr. Grimes being shot because it was all over the news on Monday, and by Friday, the schools closed early for the summer due to the flu outbreak getting so bad. A week later, they started telling everyone to go to safe camps in Atlanta because whatever the flu was, it made people go crazy."

She seems so confident in what she is relating, if petrified he won't believe any of it. "Crazy?"

Sophia shudders, tears appearing in her eyes. "Like trying to eat people crazy."

He thinks of the texts he got just last night from a friend who worked in Chattanooga. Chris attended police training with him, but eventually moved out of state to follow his ex-wife and daughters. The other man talked about a case that was crazy shit to beat all crazy shit... and it involved some druggie trying to eat hospital staff when they'd declared him dead in error. 

"I'm not going to discount your dreams, Sophia. But why call and ask for me specifically? Why not your mama or someone else?"

She moves forward and huddles into one of the two chairs facing the principal's desk. "Because you took care of all of us when we couldn't get to Atlanta." 

She glances up, eyes beginning to puddle with tears. "Because you stopped my daddy from hurting my mama. In all the scary stuff in the dreams, you were safe. I saw the news last night and they showed your picture, and I was so scared because if I could dream about a real person I never met... if you and Mr. Grimes were real, then what if the rest is?"

Shane doesn't know how to wrap his mind around that, and he agrees with the girl. Part of him wants desperately for it to be some sort of future prediction, one where Rick is alive and well. But she seems terrified of the rest of what the dreams represent.

He runs a hand over the back of his head, thinking it over. Even if the girl's dreams mean nothing - it's always possible she met him and Rick at some point and absorbed friendly cops into her subconscious - she still admitted to what they called him here for. He has to run with that, even if he ignores the less feasible parts of what she is saying.

"The dreams... we can't do a lot there. But we can fix your daddy hurting your mama right now," he manages at last.

She looks hopeful, but also too old for her age, like most kids growing up in homes like hers. "Mama took us to Atlanta once, to a shelter, but I guess she got scared and we came back home. Even if he goes to jail, he can just get right back out and then he'll be really mad."

The deputy straightens. "Well, he can be mad all he likes if he doesn't know where you are. I'll take you and your mama somewhere safe."

"Okay." Her trembling hands still with the agreement. "I trust you to keep us safe."

It is an anchor in Shane's thrown-adrift world. He'll honor the promise. Now he just has to convince the girl's mother to share a trust that the child seems to have gleaned from nightmarish dreams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a trickle more written for this one, but making it original is a tricky, tricky outline. It isn't true time travel, and Sophia is the only person with any memories of the TV show... So only season one. Consider this an unfinished, draft first chapter.


	3. Life is Unknowable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pediatric nurse practitioner Alejandra Ybarra survives the massacre of patients and staff in the hospital by hiding under a sink in a medication room. She honors the sacrifice of the doctor who saved her by caring for the sole other survivor of the military's slaughter: Deputy Rick Grimes. Part 1 of the Grenade series.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings for the aftermath of executions of medical staff at the hospital in King County.
> 
> Should be considered a draft chapter, like all Bunny Farm chapters. 
> 
> As requested by by DieAvocado and Veronica. :)

_“The grenade moment. Life has been trundling along and then, bang, with no warning, it explodes. Something makes your soul cry out, whacks you in the stomach with an iron bar, makes you feel that some outside agency has reached a fist into you, unfurling angry fingers and tearing your heart from your body. Life has changed forever; perhaps it has now become unlivable.”_

_“That’s what the grenade moment does. It separates the old life from the new and there will forever be a divide. The blade has come down. Life as we knew it has been detached, truncated. What lies on the other side is both unknowable and unthinkable.”_

_From A Manual for Heartache by Cathy Rentzenbrink_

What once was Alex Ybarra’s refuge - the one place where she felt in control of life - has disintegrated into complete chaos. When she came in for her shift after a spare few hours of sleep at home, the higher ups said that the military is helping to evacuate, and initially, they do. Alex’s tiny, delicate charges are long gone, airlifted from rural King County to Atlanta or other sites considered more secure in their infrastructure. Her place of employment is only a Level II for the nursery, rating only a special care nursery, not a full NICU.

“Alejandra? What are you still doing here?” She turns to see the tall form of the Head of Pediatrics, Dr. Samuel Myers, striding toward her.

“Checking to see that we didn’t miss any pediatric patients.” Her reply is distracted as she checks the overfull clipboard, stuffed with patient overviews originally printed in multiple copies. Copies went with patients on the aircraft that flitted them away to safety. She keeps having the eerie feeling a baby or child might have been missed.

“I arranged for you to leave with the last of the newborns.” Dr. Myers looks genuinely distressed, almost to the level she would call distraught. One of the reasons Alex chose pediatrics as her specialty was that the doctors tended to be more human and less overbearing, and Myers is a prime example of the kind and gentle aspect of the profession.

“They said, but they’re short on nurses to get the other patients covered until we’re fully evacuated, so I stayed.”

She frowns, because Myers flinches. What does he know that he isn’t telling? He glances back over his shoulder down the deserted hallway. Unlike Alex, the other two nurses did evacuate with their small patients. As far as she knows, she and Myers are the last two employees left on the floor, now that she’s finished her bed check.

“Dr. Myers?”

Myers whips his head back around to look at her, and she notices for the first time that he’s disheveled in a way she’s never seen him. He’s never been a peacock, not like the younger pediatrician that works here, but he’s always been carefully tidy. Now, his salt-and-pepper hair looks like he spent hours yanking on it, and he is without his colorful stethoscope and its little animal face snap-ons that keep the children entertained. She’s never seen him without it.

“Alejandra? You really shouldn’t be here.”

There’s loud noises from the floor above, and the sound of the elevator moving. Myers grabs her, the move so unexpected that Alex doesn’t even begin to fight him as he drags her bodily toward the medication room. He jabs his code in and shoves her inside.

“Hide. Do not come out no matter what.”

“Dr. Myers? What’s going on?”

He fumbles at a pocket and shoves a crumpled piece of paper at her. “Hide. Please, just hide. Be quiet and stay safe.”

The push backwards he gives her tumbles her to the ground in sheer shock, and he yanks the door closed. She hears the electronic locks engage, even as her bruised palms and posterior begin to sting. Still sprawled on the floor, she carefully unwads the paper, seeing the fax headers that label it from the army medical center at Fort Gordon.

It’s scrawled in barely legible writing, not typewritten.

_“Evacuate your staff. Orders given to consider all adults as contagious and to terminate without hesitation.”_

It isn’t signed, but Alex has heard Dr. Myers mention a colleague who chose military service over civilian. It explains his hurried advice as the first cases of the so-called flu drifted into the hospital, to disable the brain of any deceased patients. He’s had military contact all this time.

But surely the military won’t execute civilians simply for being on the staff in an infected hospital? The public would never stand for that level of martial law and paranoia. She rolls to her knees, standing with a wince.

Despite her mental rejection of the idea, she can’t shake Dr. Myers' almost palpable fear. He’s one of the most level-headed men she’s ever met in her life, and he was terrified.

Just as she reaches the door, she hears voices. They’re muffled by the solid wood of the medication room door, but she can tell the newcomers sound angry. Myers’ reply is even more muffled. Before she can open the door to peek out, there’s the sound of gunfire. Rapid shots, like Alex has only ever heard on television before.

She only keeps from crying out by pressing both hands hard over her mouth. She’s beginning to hyperventilate as she creeps backward from the door, eyes frantically scanning the room for a place to hide.

Can they get into a room secured by an electronic code? Will they even bother to search a place not intended for people anyway?

Alex can’t take the chance. The room is too open, meant for preparing medications to dispense on the floor. But there’s a sink, and it’s the first time in her life that she’s been grateful for her small stature. Folding herself into the cabinet quickly, she pulls the doors shut.

Curled in the darkness, she prays, clutching the rosary out of her pocket and trying to draw comfort from the cool stone beads and metal sliding through her fingers.

Hours pass, judged by the brief glimpses she risks of her watch in the darkness. The building rocks a few times by what she thinks are explosions. She wonders if she’s escaped the fate Myers feared only to die in a pile of rubble, trapped under a sink.

Finally, she can’t stand the claustrophobic location anymore. If she’s going to die, she’ll die, but it won’t be under a damn sink smelling of metal and disinfectant.

It takes a good five minutes, sprawled in the floor on her belly, for her limbs to move past the driving pain of circulation returning. Once she can stand without feeling like she’s walking on hot coals, Alex eases the door open. Slow. Easy. Hopefully without being noticed if anyone is still on the pediatric and maternity floors.

The lighting is dim, only the pediatric wing lights still on in her limited viewpoint, and the nursing area lacks windows due to design reserving them for patient areas. From the flickering down the maternity wing corridor, damage is causing the lack of lighting, not that someone actually turned them off. She creeps along against the nursing desk, glad that the hospital design places the medication room behind the bulky half circle desk.

Listening, she hears nothing but her own carefully modulated breathing. It’s so quiet Alex thinks she can hear her own heartbeat.

Risking being seen, she rises slowly to her feet in a crouch, peeking over the desk. There’s no movement toward either corridor, but it lets her spot the most horrifying thing she’s seen so far since the damned world started falling apart.

Lying sprawled in the brightly lit pediatric corridor is Samuel Myers. The wall bears witness that he was standing when he was shot, bits of blood, bone, and brain matter splattered like some scene out of a Dick Wolf crime show. Blood pools around the body, soaking his white coat and navy blue scrubs. She whimpers, fear of discovery battling with the need to make sure he’s so deathly still because he really is dead. Her nursing training wins over terror.

But it’s to no avail. The kindly man who always treated everyone with gentlemanly respect, from doctors to janitorial staff, is dead and probably has been since she heard the gunshots hours before. There’s no chance it’s an accident. Even without police or military training, with only Hollywood to go by, there’s no mistaking Myers was executed.

Three wounds to the chest, one to the head. He was kneeling by the time of the final shot, with the evidence of his position like gruesome graffiti on the wall behind him.

Alex does make it to the unisex visitor’s bathroom before she vomits, body wrenching over the toilet as she sobs. Fear, loss, confusion - all war with one another. She flushes the toilet and rinses her mouth before venturing back out. 

He did his best to save her, first with the evacuation orders and then by stuffing her in a room those unfamiliar with a hospital are unlikely to search. She cannot leave this man to rot in a hallway, even if the world’s gone insane.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, a little voice spawned by her medical training babbles about shock, but she ignores that information. It takes nearly an hour and the help of one of the patient lifts because he outweighs her by a good eighty pounds. When she’s done, Samuel Myers is reclined on a bed once reserved for his own patients. 

Nothing can truly hide the damage to his body, but she’s done her best. As long as you ignore the smudges on the surgical cap tucked too low on his forehead and the complete stillness of his chest and limbs, he could be sleeping. A doctor gone exhausted by too long on duty, stealing a catnap in an empty patient room.

It takes another half hour of scrubbing to remove the evidence in the hallway.

Alex spends a full hour sobbing and naked in one of the patient showers on the maternity wing, the patient room mostly dark from the damaged electrical. Sunlight still streams into the big, bright windows meant to keep new mothers cheerful, as if the world hasn’t given itself over to madness and the cold-blooded murder of gentle old men who spent their entire lives dedicated to healing children.

Her body is frigidly cold when she finally shuts off the water. She towels off mechanically, her brain feeling as dull and foggy as it did after the one and only hangover she experienced in college. She has no scrubs or clothing, so she wraps herself in one of the extra towels and ventures toward the tiny staff room where all the nurses keep spare changes of clothing.

The black jeans and red T-shirt seem alien to her when she tugs them out of her locker. She stuffs them back, opting only for the spare underwear and socks. Her shoes survived the cleaning spree, so after she dons a new set of scrubs. The bright yellow worn by pediatric nursing staff never seemed so completely out of place.

She could go home, but there’s nothing there for her to go to. After the warning of military slaughter, she doesn’t trust the radio broadcasts that were telling people to evacuate to Atlanta, either. She knows the hospital evacuation was not complete. Her floor went first, and the last helicopter left only half an hour before Myers found her. There’s no way they got the immobile, long-term patients out.

Disassembling one of the low-tech, telescoping IV poles, she arms herself with the metal rod and heads into the stairwell. She knows why the executioners shot poor Dr. Myers in the head despite the damage done to his chest. This might not be one of the larger hospitals, but they did learn, after losses in the emergency room and surgical floors, that whatever reanimates the dead requires an intact brain.

Alex very carefully doesn’t think of the colleagues who died to learn that theory and damns the government for not sharing. There’s no way they didn’t _know_ , especially faster than rural hospitals like her own.

The third floor is an exercise in terror. She puts down three walkers the military failed to execute properly. Two are patients, gowns trailing around their grayed bodies. The third is a nursing student that Alex knows and wishes somehow, someone had looked after the girl like Myers tried to do for Alex. But there’s no signs of actual life anywhere on the floor. She does her best not to look directly at the four bodies in staff clothing near the elevator, all executed the same way as Dr. Myers on the second floor.

She heads for the fourth floor, where the long-term care patients reside. Someone’s blocked off the doors to one wing, chaining it shut and declaring ‘DON’T OPEN, DEAD INSIDE’. She wants to tell the culprit, ‘no shit’. Fingers strain at the door, skeletal and oozing. The odor alone is one of the worst she’s ever experienced.

Near the elevators, bodies lie in a row once again. Seven. Four staff, three in civilian clothing she thinks were probably family members desperately trying to see their loved ones evacuated as promised. She carefully ignores the distinctive haircut and professional color of the one in nursing scrubs. She isn’t ready yet to recognize more colleagues. 

Not yet. Maybe not ever.

Room by room, she makes her way down the long-term wing. Patients lie dead in their beds, evidence of their passing splattered in their forehead. In some rooms, machinery still bleats warnings, with enough power - emergency or otherwise, she isn’t sure - keeping unneeded computerized IV medications going and monitors trying desperately to alert staff that the patients the monitors supervise are well beyond the limitations set for the equipment.

She switches off the alarms methodically. Unplugs IVs so they don’t join the cacophony of alerts once their meds and fluids run out. 

It’s such a routine, almost muscle memory, that when she finally finds the room where the machines aren’t crying out for attention, she almost doesn’t notice.

There’s no bullet wound in the man’s forehead. Somehow, someone got sloppy. How or why, she will probably never know. But she’s cautious still, remembering nurses eaten by patients they tried to help. She waits until she sees the barely noticeable rise of his chest. Breathing, and on his own. There’s no ventilator in the room, unusual for long-term care, but not impossible.

Her hand trembles as Alex reaches under the covers, grasping his ankle and letting her fingers find the posterior tibial artery. From the foot of the bed, she’s got more of a chance to defend herself if he turns. She grips her improvised and gory weapon so tight her hand aches.

The pulse is faint, but there.

She risks moving higher, pressing her fingers to the inside of his elbow to a better pulse point.

Medical training kicks in as her eyes stay on her watch, held so she keeps the metal pole between herself and the man. Bradycardic, feeble, irregular.

She realizes she knows this patient. It’s the deputy shot ten days ago, and his care is both gossip and prayer around the hospital like few other patients. He was taken off the medications keeping him in a medically induced coma three days ago, but did not wake.

Now he’s abandoned in a building full of the dead, unaware of the world dying around him. She prays none of the dead by the elevator were his family. 

Perhaps the kindest thing would be to let him go. To complete what the military started and failed to finish. But Alex trained as a nurse, six grueling years of education to save lives, not end them.

She scrambles for a terminal, praying the servers are still functioning and accessible. The printer whirs and grumbles, spitting out document after document. He isn’t her patient, and she desperately needs this information to even begin to stabilize him.

Alex knows it is illogical, but she doesn’t fight the growing feeling that she has to stay, has to save this man to atone for Dr. Myers’ willingness to sacrifice himself while she hid behind a locked door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The opening quote will be used for both stories in the series (although there might end up a third... it's a bit vague at the moment).
> 
> The Grenade Series: two or three parallel stories, filling two different requests:  
> Rick's nurse - who is/was she - and could she live, combined with a viable Shane/Lori story actually set in the ZA.
> 
> This side of the tale ( _Life is Unknowable_ ) will feature our OC, Alex, and she will survive this time. But that is going to cause a major butterfly effect, because under medical supervision, Rick won't go haring off on a damned horse into walker-infested Atlanta. He doesn't get the magical resolution of randomly finding his family and has to accept and mourn they are likely gone forever. POVs will generally alternate with Alex and Rick, although he may not show up in chapter two, depending on how much of Alex's solo aware period I explore as real time versus flashback/narrated to Rick later. A sustained Rick POV is a personal challenge, as I find him uncomfortable to write and hard to relate to.
> 
> In _Life is Unthinkable_ , without Rick's arrival, the quarry group will face a different future and strategy. The grief and emotions behind the Shane/Lori pairing will be explored in their parallel story and how they, Carl, and the others of the quarry survive without the miracle of Rick's return. It'll backtrack to the fall of King County, opening with Shane's efforts to take Lori and Carl to safety. I'll post chapter one in this Bunny Farm collection tomorrow (or tonight if I get real froggy). POVs will alternate Shane and Lori.
> 
> The part I haven't fully decided yet is whether to have the quarry group fully intact with all players present as of the first few episodes, or if not everyone makes it to the quarry, providing a third group. It may be easier to feature just the two stories.
> 
> This completely ignores any of the webisodes as canon. Larger scale plots like the Governor will probably be disregarded entirely. Characters from any season may be fair game. This will go pretty far afield on the AU stage, I think. As with all of my stories, the children actually featured in the show live or flashback will not die (with the possible exception of Abraham's children), which may change parental story arcs.
> 
> I probably won't expand on this story until RBM concludes and ISO is underway, as well as the two separate groups in the Hell series reunited, but the Muse was pretty dang screeching this teaser needed to go out first. ;)


	4. Life is Unthinkable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Lori packs for evacuation to Atlanta, Shane's arrival with news of Rick's death causes her to have to step up to keep her family together.
> 
> Part 2 of the Grenade series.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As requested by Valleygirl and GoingInMotions (and others) for a viable Shane/Lori romance. May also fill Veronica's request for alternate quarry leadership.
> 
> Trigger warning: deals with acute grief surrounding the death of a loved one.

_Sometimes I wonder if you even care about us at all._

That's the last thing Lori Grimes said to her husband before a rogue gunman put him in a coma. It was a petty fight, borne of weeks of the near silent treatment after a prior petty fight that she can't even remember the details of. She knew the second those horrible words left her mouth that she crossed a line she might not be able back up from.

Rick's beautiful, expressive blue eyes clouded over with a hurt worse than if she had just picked up the empty egg pan off the stovetop and smacked him in the head with it. What she did was made worse when he stopped looking at her and focused on Carl.

Their son just stared at them, his fork forgotten next to his breakfast plate. There hadn't been time to apologize for her words, because Rick's radio crackled to life and summoned him away. She hates that fucking radio.

It's wrong, she knows. She's a cop's wife, and it's supposed to be an honor that your husband protects the community and keeps it safe. But all those people who would glare at her and judge don't understand the reality of a husband always on call and never home. They don't have to explain to a disappointed kid over and over why his dad is never at school events, because the sheriff's a lazy ass who can't keep enough reserve deputies to actually respect days off.

She didn't get a chance to make it right. Instead, she got Shane Walsh stepping out of a squad car looking like his entire world ended. That's how she knew it was bad, long before she stepped foot inside the hospital and heard terms like flail chest and internal bleeding. 

Nothing on this planet scared Shane, and he was rocked to his very core.

Now she's packing belongings, trying to figure out what is a necessity and what isn't. The world's been on a fast slide to hell since Rick was shot, as if taking his light out of the world is poisoning it irreversibly. There's cannibalism in the streets, combined with people dying by the thousands from what cannot be the flu the government claimed it was.

Her life is doing another about face today, this one heralded by Shane in that goddamned patrol car the same as the other. It's Leon as the fallen officer this time, and the young idiot won't get surgery and a coma he can't wake up from. King County is no longer safe, and Shane is doing what his partner can't: taking them to Atlanta.

She does her best to ignore the worn duffel by the back door that holds all Shane feels he needs to leave the only county he's ever called home.

"Carl! I still don't see a single bag of yours in the kitchen yet!" she calls down the hall as she drags the luggage set down from the attic. They spent a small fortune on the luggage and then used it for exactly one vacation down to the Gulf. There were always work obligations that kept them close, and you didn't need good luggage to camp at the state park.

"I can't figure out what to take."

Exasperated and feeling overwhelmed, Lori leaves the luggage on her bed and goes to see what the problem is. As she expects, he's not stuck on packing clothes, but toys.

"Take half of your comics and whatever you would usually pack if we were going to Grandma's in Atlanta. Use your school backpack." Not that they'll see Lori's mother this time. She went into the hospital at Grady two days ago, and the news wasn't good the last time Lori could get someone on the phone.

Rather than get to the refugee center and find her son packed shirts and no underwear, or something equally chaotic, she drags open the top drawer of his dresser and grabs all the socks and underwear, dumping them into Rick's old gear bag for work. Slamming the drawer shut, she works her way down the dresser, filling the bag with shirts, pants, and a couple pairs of shorts that can double as pajamas.

"Carl, honey, you've got to pack. If you don't, we'll leave without anything but your clothes." She shoulders the bag she packed, eyeing where Carl has his comics out, but he's just sitting still.

"Shane went to check on Dad, right?" he mumbles.

"Oh, Carl." Lori kneels to put her arms around her son. "Dad's going to be airlifted to Atlanta with the other patients who can't be discharged, remember? He'll be to Atlanta before we are, I bet."

"Alright." Carl nudges a plastic sheathed copy of an old Superman comic. "This one used to be Dad's. Would it be okay to take anyway?"

As much as she wants to tell him they'll be back soon, she can't promise that. "Why don't you take all of the ones your Dad gave you and your favorites of the rest?"

Permission given to take the more fragile copies, he actually smiles. Once she's confident he's packing, she leaves him to it, taking his bag to the kitchen. The pantry is another task she has to tackle, and she resists the urge to break something in frustration and fear.

Instead, she unzips the nested suitcases on her bed, starting a mental tally of what space should be reserved for clothes versus other essentials. There's no telling what supplies they'll have access to at a refugee center. She keeps remembering the disasters around Hurricane Katrina and how poorly the government prepared without a nationwide disaster to stretch resources thin.

With that in mind, she takes the smallest suitcase to the bathroom. She packs away every last hygiene item, the ones in use and the extras, filling the bag. It's the first time she's really appreciated Rick's embarrassment at being sent down the feminine hygiene aisle, because she's got two completely unopened packs of 96 tampons thanks to him swearing off going ever again.

It isn't until she zips the bag that she realizes she packed Rick's things by habit. Shaving gel, razor and replacement blades, and that hard to find 2-in-1 shampoo he loves. She hesitates, thinking maybe she should leave it behind, but zips the bag instead. Rick won't need it in the hospital, but maybe one day soon he will.

It takes two trips to pack bath towels, not the good ones, but the beach towels and the older ones she keeps for times the sink leaks or the time Carl put liquid dish detergent in the dishwasher. She tosses the big pack of toilet paper in the direction of the bed.

She's just dumped the contents of her underwear drawer in a suitcase when she hears the back door slam.

"Carl, stay in your room a minute while I talk to your mama." She can hear Shane getting closer as he speaks, and Carl replies with an easy affirmative. He always listens to Shane, better than both parents most days.

When Shane shuts the door behind him, he's shaking like a leaf, and he looks like his world just ended. Her hands feel numb as she drops the handful of socks she's holding on top of her bras and panties. She can think of only one thing on this planet that would make the normally brash, carefree man in front of her break down like this.

"Shane?" she says softly, forcing her feet to work and propel her across the room. His legs give way before she reaches him, and he slides to the floor with a thud of his ass impacting on the hardwood floor.

"Shane. Talk to me, please." She isn't sure why she's begging for words to confirm what she suspects. It would be better to delay confirming the horrible truth that is crawling out of the dark abyss in the back of her mind.

When she kneels between his feet, she can see that he's crying, great silent sobs wracking his big form. She can't figure out why he's suppressing sound until she remembers he asked Carl to stay in his room. Whether he doesn't want Carl to see him cry, or he wants the boy to have a few precious more moments of not feeling this gut churning grief, Lori doesn't know.

She reaches for Shane as the tide bursts for herself. She wants to keen and wail, so all of the sorrow gripping her can escape. But it would terrify her son, and she can't do that. 

Instead, she rocks on her knees, Shane's head held to her shoulder. His hands are gripped into the back of her shirt so hard she feels the thin fabric give way. She can't tell who is making the choking sound, a hyperventilation of breath dragged into airways clogged by tears.

She can't tell how much time passes from when her mind understood the terrible truth and when the world creeps back in slowly. She can hear birds outside, those damned doves that have been roosting in the neighbor's hanging flower pot, cooing on like the world didn't just spin right out of orbit for the three people in this house. 

Her fingers ache, and she slowly relaxes them from where she inadvertently buried them in Shane's dark hair. It had to hurt like hell, but he seems too lost to his grief to care.

"Shane?" She tries again, and he responds to her words this time, lifting his head to look at her. He can't seem to find his voice, dark eyes searching her face.

"Rick's dead, isn't he?" she says gently, providing the words the usually eloquent man can't manage. It leaves a sour taste in her mouth, as if she's bitten into a rotten lemon.

"I don't know how the world works without him." Shane's voice sounds strained and hoarse. She wonders if he screamed it gone in the privacy of his patrol car. She knows she would, if she had somewhere Carl wouldn't hear her.

She doesn't know either. As bad as things got sometimes, the worst she ever imagined was a divorce with stilted conversations about Carl until he went off to college. Maybe in that scenario, she would go back to college and finish her art degree, and Rick would marry some sweet faced thing that didn't mind being tied to a cop's schedule.

There was never a moment where she imagined her life wouldn't have Rick going about his day somewhere in the world.

To buy time to find the right words, she wipes at her face with the sleeve of her overshirt. Shane's sitting bonelessly against the door, still in his full deputy gear. His eyes track the motion of her arm, but there's no real spark behind them right now. She tugs her shirttail free and gently dries his face.

He allows the tender attention with a malleability that frightens her. Shane's always been so boisterous and full of motion, a hurricane of a man in a world that better appreciates the gentility of men like Rick. It's another sign of the world gone crazy, that his brightness is so dim it's nearly snuffed out.

"Carl." She watches a flicker of interest return. It's a magic word, so she repeats it and expands upon it. "Carl needs you."

It's both selfish and not, for her to set the hook deep in this grieving man's heart and tie his lifelong dependence on Rick Grimes to his son instead. Shane needs to be needed, and even without the dead walking around them, Carl needs Shane.

He takes a deep breath, expanding that wide chest of his, and jerks his head in acceptance. He finally frees his hands from their fabric straining grip on her shirt. "How do we tell him?"

Lori rocks back on her heels, eyes going unfocused as she looks toward Carl's room on the other side of her bathroom. She worries at her bottom lip while she thinks. 

"We don't, not til we're on the road." She knows her son, and if she tells him now, he will demand proof, to see his father's body. There's no way in hell he's going near the hospital with how one by one medical facilities have been overrun. She stopped taking him for visits three days ago because of the risk.

"What do you need me to do?"

Shane sounds like a lost little boy, and she locks away her own pain so she can plan what comes next. "Get changed, if you want. Your duffel's near the back door."

She gets to her feet, wincing at the pain of blood flow returning to her lower legs. "Then we pack and we go to Atlanta. We keep Carl safe. That's what we do."

He lumbers upright, fingers already going for fastenings to strip away police gear he no longer needs. His eyes aren't so blank anymore, now that he's got a goal. "I'll keep you both safe," he promises.

Lori nods. She has no doubt that he'll protect Carl to his dying breath. If that devotion happens to keep her safe, too, because Carl needs a mother, she won't turn it down. 

Shane opens the door, disappearing without a word to do as she suggested.

Rick would come back to haunt her if she didn't make sure Shane survives losing him as much as she looks after Carl. Many times, when she was at her lowest confidence, she used to think her husband loved the other man more than he did her. If Rick had lived in a world less hung up on ideas of proper masculinity and acceptable sexuality, she suspects he might have chosen differently in who wore the gold band that matched his own. 

They've lost the lynch pin that holds them all together, and now it's her job to carve herself into Rick's replacement and keep the family from being lost in the storm.

She doesn't know if she's strong enough. This is the reality she's always faced, that one day all the years of fearing Rick's death in the line of duty would end the way a cop's wife's nightmares always do. She feels inadequate to the task set before her, but she can't waiver, even if her emotions threaten to overwhelm her.

Lori reaches for the pillow Rick hasn't slept on in ten days and muffles her scream. Then she breathes in the fading scent of her husband, letting it linger in her senses. She allows herself one final broken sob before she places the pillow back where it belongs.

Later, when everything is packed, and Shane is vibrating with fear and tension because he's had to put down two of the things that were once her neighbors while they packed her SUV to overflowing, she steps into the bedroom one last time.

That pillow is the only one left on the bed, and she finds she can't leave it behind. Gathering it in her arms, she lets the last traces of his cologne give her strength for what lies ahead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My original intent was for this first draft chapter to be Shane's POV, but then the Muse went rogue and this happened instead.
> 
> Will alternate Shane/Lori POV. This will be the strongest pro-Lori story I have ever written.
> 
> Will contain references to past Shane/Rick and possibly issues to do with internalized homophobia. End game is not Rick/Shane, but will stay with Rick/OC and Lori/Shane.


	5. We Are Made Wise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shane and three young teenagers are cut off from the farmhouse when the walker swarm descends on the farm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This goes really AU for season 2.
> 
> As requested by FreddyIsComingForYou.

_"We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future" - George Bernard Shaw_

Shane isn't sure how he ended up with a trio of devoted little ducklings. He's always loved Carl, and it's been a mutual admiration society between them. But Carl is a boy.

The fact that his nephew is now part of what he can only dub the Three Musketeers baffles Shane. Everywhere Carl goes nowadays, he's bookended by two very blonde little girls. 

Girl is a misnomer in a way. Both blondes are older than Carl, although it's only a matter of months or weeks. Sophia is the oldest by nearly three months, with Beth exactly two weeks older. The significance to Shane is that there are three thirteen year olds asking endless questions as he leads them through exercises designed to strengthen the muscle weakness he's still fighting.

He knows the reality of recovering from being shot, even in a faster healing area like the upper leg, is still weeks of physical therapy. Since he doesn't have a therapist, he's improvising. The kids just make it less boring, and it does help to teach them the kinesthetic reasoning for exercises instead of boring drills alone.

It's why they're all down in the barn, away from prying eyes. Shane doesn't mind the kids seeing when he struggles or even fails. The adults' assessing eyes just piss him off.

The barn still bears a faint stench of decay from its time as a walker jail. That's terrifying by itself to recall, hearing gunshots from inside the barn in the middle of an afternoon two weeks ago. It got worse when his ducklings turned out to be responsible.

Beth Greene's new friends convinced her that her mother and brother were truly gone, and the determined little blonde decided she wasn't waiting on her father to do the right thing. Carl stole a gun and box of ammo from Daryl's saddlebag, and the three of them climbed into the loft of the barn.

When Rick and Daryl reached the loft, Beth was reloading under Carl's instructions, and there were already four walkers down to her inexpert shooting.

The adults helped finish what Beth started, sending Hershel Greene right off the wagon. That trip to town made life more complicated for everyone, resulting in the punk still confined to a shed on the property. No one likes Shane's opinion after Rick and Daryl returned with Randall, so he's in the barn. It's a sad statement about their group that three kids have better sense than all the adults combined.

As they finish the last of their cool down stretches, Shane tosses water bottles to each of the kids. They all drink, sprawled on hay bales dragged in here for their comfort.

"Think they're all still fighting about Randall?" Carl asks, looking toward the house through the cracked open barn doors.

Beth snorts. The cynicism she developed after losing faith in her father makes Shane a little sad, remembering the bubbly kid who read aloud to him while he was stuck in bed for two days after Otis accidentally shot him. "What do you expect? Everyone wants to pretend it is still like before."

Sophia scoots over to sit next to Beth. The two girls lace their fingers together. They've been inseparable friends since Sophia's flight through the woods brought her into Otis's hunting range. The farm hand saved her from a pursuing walker and brought her to the farm for safety while he looked for her people.

Having two very outgoing friends is helping the oldest girl come out of her protective shell. "They'll have to make a decision eventually."

Daryl and Shane have little to say to each other on the best of days, but the redneck went out of his way to make sure Shane doesn't leave either of the girls alone anymore. The ex-deputy doesn't really need Daryl to fill in the blanks for what he's worried about.

But they and Andrea are the only three taking it completely seriously, the threat Randall and his type pose. Everyone else is responding to Dale's speeches about retaining civilized humanity. He wonders, not for the first time, if he should just take care of the problem quietly. Or he could set up an escape. No one would begrudge him shooting the little pedophile bastard then.

"That's weird." Carl's on his feet, venturing toward the doors. "I was sure everyone was at the house."

"Carl, get back from the door." Beth sounds afraid, and Shane responds quickly, snatching the boy back.

Beth's blue eyes are wide and frightened. "Walkers."

The girl is right. They haven't been noticed yet, but those at the house have. Shane thinks the lingering walker scent might be hiding him and the kids, but nothing shields the farmhouse and the fucking gas grill they have going in the yard to cook up venison from the deer Daryl and Glenn brought back today.

Instinct tells him to call out a warning when one walker becomes three, then six, then a dozen. But shouting or shooting would draw attention to the barn and the children he has to protect.

"Who the fuck is on watch?" he mutters. There's no one atop the RV.

It's a rhetorical question, but Sophia answers quietly. "Dale's supposed to be."

The damned old busybody is probably off trying to make sure the folks on the fence about Randall, like Glenn and Maggie, don't shift opinions. But he's left them vulnerable.

"Beth, can you lead the others to that little back door and peek to see if they're behind the barn, too?"

She nods solemnly. Once the kids are near the back, Shane tries to think of how to warn the others. Before he can just risk firing a shot, finally, someone comes out of the house. He hears the distinctive sound of a crossbow firing and knows that Daryl's going to raise the alarm.

"It's clear back here." Beth's voice is hidden under the sound of gunfire erupting from the direction of the house.

Shane hesitates, watching as defending the house draws more walkers. But the part that makes his blood run cold is Maggie Greene's panicked scream as her pale face comes under the porch light when she can't make it to the barn due to the mass of dead in the way.

"Shane! Take the kids and run!"

He doesn't hesitate. Normally, his place would be among the fighters trying to defend their safe haven. Tonight? It's getting the kids away from the herd swarming the place.

Keeping the three teens in his sight, they scurry across the open field behind the barn. They're ignored by the walkers in favor of the noise and smells further down. When they reach the treeline, he risks a look back.

The herd on the highway was so large he lost count in his estimate as he lay under the vehicle. What is advancing toward the defenders now in cars and on the porch makes that herd look small. Knowing there's no way he can help, he meets the scared yet trusting eyes of the kids.

They turn away from the swarm and run.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To summarize the AU of season 2:
> 
> Canon until the herd on the highway. Sophia still goes missing, but instead of Otis finding a walker Sophia, he saves her instead. The rest go out looking for her, but Shane is shot instead of Carl. Bethie goes badass after hearing about the CDC MRIs, Hershel gets drunk, Randall ends up on the farm. Since Shane's still recovering, Daryl takes his place in 18 Miles Out. Dale's not out in the field to get eaten. Otis doesn't die, since Shane's surgery isn't as complex in supply needs.
> 
> Delayed storylines: Lori hasn't taken the pregnancy test yet, but Judith is Shane's.
> 
> Shane and his three musketeers will remain separate from the others for a currently undetermined period of time. Georgia is a really big state.
> 
> Shane and the kids eventually end up in a safe community (one I designed for the Hell series and didn't use) a few months ahead of Rick's group. The crazy wandering has a good reason: three desperate families trying to find their lost ducklings.
> 
> Expect more of an Uncle Shane theme than the fatherly one of the Hell series.
> 
> Shane pairing undetermined at present.
> 
> Draft chapter that may be revised when the story eventually goes live.


	6. Swim in Strange Water

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beth escapes her Grady kidnappers before they reach the hospital, only to cross paths with a man she hasn't seen since before the farm fell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently, today was a drabble day for my Muse. First draft chapter.
> 
> As requested by Yohoho and encouraged by BetaDaughter.

_"Survival is the ability to swim in strange water" - Frank Herbert_

Beth stopped struggling a few miles back after she was snatched up on the road. She doesn't know who these men are, but back before the world ended, this kind of abduction usually meant something she doesn't want to contemplate. After the apocalypse, she doesn't think it's anything better.

Because she's handcuffed in the backseat as punishment for her protests about their supposed rescue, they aren't paying close attention to her anymore. She tries to think like Maggie, and what her sister would do. Easing down into the seat, she pretends to sleep as the two men bitch about the bullshit night patrols being reinforced by them finding a refugee.

She refrains from a derisive snort. If these jerks wanted to reduce their time out in the dark, carrying her back against her will seems the height of stupidity.

Very carefully, she eases her arms down as far as they can go, reaching back to old gymnastic tricks her friends who were allowed the lessons taught her. One thing about life at the prison, she's in good shape and hasn't lost her flexibility. Once she's got her wrists back in front of her, she thinks on her next step.

Television would dictate she either choke one of the men with the cuffs or escape the moving vehicle. A snide voice that sounds oddly like Daryl says of course that Hollywood shit don't work. She lies still again, listening for clues as to where she's being taken.

Her chance for escape comes unexpectedly. The big car screeches to a halt with a thudding crash that rolls her into the floorboard. Both men get out of the car, cursing, and she hears the word deer and tries not to laugh. It seems car versus animal is still part of their world.

Since the men seem to be debating strapping the deer to the hood, with confusing commentary about guinea pig dinners, she peeks over the seat. The deer somehow ended up in the far ditch, so both men are at least twenty-five feet away from the car right now.

Stealing the car might be a good idea if she was certain it wasn't damaged. She also doesn't know where she is to risk driving a large, unfamiliar car in the dark. Despite the fact that she's terrified of being weaponless in the dark, she's less afraid of walkers than what awaits her at the end of this ride.

Easing the door open, Beth slips out of the car and pushes the door shut. They're not in the country anymore. What city it is, she can't tell in the dark, but there's too much concrete and asphalt for anything else. She makes it behind a wrecked truck and risks a look back.

Tweedledum and Tweedledee are still arguing over the deer. She tries to remember everything Daryl taught her about moving quietly, hoping it translates to city streets as well as the woods. Nothing moves anywhere as she stays in the shadows of the buildings. Instinct tells her to flee indoors, but she fights it down. The more distance she puts between herself and the men, the better.

She begins scanning parking lots and residential yards for weapons. Her first one is a broken shovel handle, but it's better than nothing. It's not like she hasn't seen improvised weapons regularly now.

Dawn is lightening the sky when exhaustion starts winning out over the desperate need to put space between her and any pursuit. She can read enough signs now to know she's in Atlanta. With better light, she assesses the businesses she's passing. 

The old bakery seems like a good idea on the surface, but she's heard too many stories about survivors crossing paths at food resource locations. Alone, with no real weapon? She doesn't want to risk meeting people, especially the type that venture into a dangerous area like the city.

A few buildings down she spots a building that makes her smother a sob. She trudges forward, feet sore and feeling like lead. At the door to the building, she traces her fingers across the lettering still intact on unbroken glass. She can't bring herself to damage the painted animals gamboling across the glass.

Instead, she circles the building. It's much easier to use her shovel handle to break the narrow glass in the back door. She tenses to see if the noise will bring unwanted attention. Nothing stirs, and she picks away the remaining glass with trembling fingers. 

Reaching through is uncomfortable with her cuffed hand, but she unlocks the deadbolts and doorknob, before letting herself in. Being inside lets some of the tension in her thin frame ease, but she doesn't dare lock the door yet. She might not have been allowed on the supply runs, but she did listen as they were rehashed at meals. She has to clear the building.

One by one, she checks each room, feeling the sense of overwhelming loss threaten at the familiar yet not familiar building. It doesn't seem right to be inside a veterinary clinic that doesn't have Hershel Greene somewhere within. It's as if he's watching over her, because the building is empty.

The glass windows she admired from outside makes her nervous, so she tapes paper from the copy machine over the expanse covering up the cheery animals. "Sorry, guys," she whispers. "Y'all keep watch for me out there."

She visits the bathroom before her bladder bursts, wishing there was running water. A search through a supply closet unearths baby wipes, at least. She gives herself a makeshift wipe down of her exposed skin and tosses the grubby wipes. 

It takes her a while between exhaustion and inexperience, but she discovers in the end that movies really don't lie about how easy handcuffs are to pick with office supplies from the reception desk.

Her stomach rumbles, so she checks the kitchenette for anything still viable. Someone here liked those little packets of flavored tuna. The saltine crackers are the stalest things she's ever tasted, but they're edible with the spicy tuna scooped on top. She crunches her way through a whole sheaf of crackers and two of the four tuna packets.

Habit leads her to throw away the trash, and she braves the refrigerator. By some luck, no one had anything in it that would spoil. She checks the bottles of juice and they're nearly expired, but not quite. Opening one, she grimaces at the warm apple juice, but beggars can't be choosers.

Although sleep beckons, she circles back to lock the back door and wedge cardboard in the broken window. It won't really stop a person, but maybe they won't look closely in the dirty old alley. No one thinks about veterinary offices when they're looking for supplies. It's how Daryl and his group found medicine for the sickness that swept through the prison.

She drags the biggest dog beds from the sales display into the veterinarian's personal office, building herself a nest behind the desk. In an abundance of precaution, she raids the supplies for scalpels and eases one into each of her boots. Taking her battered shovel handle and a third scalpel, she curls up behind the desk and falls into an exhausted sleep.

Beth wakes before her body catches up on much needed sleep. She goes on alert, but before she can identify what woke her, she's being licked enthusiastically by the happiest, wiggliest pit bull she's ever seen. The last time she saw a dog was before the outbreak, and she gives in to the urge to pet the lovely creature.

Logic comes crashing down on her simple delight. There's no way a dog got inside the building without human help. "Go away," she hisses quietly, hating to give up the comfort of touching the dog's silky brindle fur.

Maybe if the dog goes and finds its owner, she can stay hidden. Obviously, the person needs supplies for the animal, but maybe they'll avoid the office.

But not if her new best friend stays put. 

"Please. You have to go away." She feels desperate tears prick at her eyes.

Her obvious distress earns her more swipes of the flat tongue. The dog whines in response to her fear.

"Biscuit?" A man's voice calls out. It's a deep timbre voice, one that tickles Beth's memory, but it's not any of the men from the prison.

The dog proves a traitor, because it makes a high pitched yip as it does its level best to pretend its sixty pound form is the same as a small lapdog. Squished beneath the dog, Beth prays for a miracle.

"There you are, you crazy mutt. What have you found?"

The man steps into view. He's an imposing guy, dressed like many of the men at the prison were in serviceable clothing and sturdy boots. A full, dark beard obscures most of his features. He frowns as he sees her, brow furrowing.

"Beth?" he asks, looking puzzled. "Beth Greene?"

It finally clicks for her who the man is, if she really stretches her memory back to the farm and the day a bleeding Carl Grimes was carried into her family's farm. Remove the beard and replace the dark curly hair he shaved after Otis died, and it's a man she hasn't seen since he disappeared in the night after the failed trip to eject Randall from the farm.

"Hello, Mister Walsh."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In order to incorporate my no dead kids rule, the story goes AU in season two that Sophia is found safe. Shane leaves the farm alone after 18 Miles Out. Most presume him dead after all this time.
> 
> However, my no dead kids policy does not protect the adults who died in canon during the prison seasons. Everything happened, down to Lori's death in childbirth. 
> 
> However, instead of Lizzie and Mika, Tyreese escapes the prison when it falls with Sophia and Andre, as well as Judith. Other children can be presumed to have escaped with other adults and scattered to the winds, with only the ones important to the canon group being part of the story eventually.
> 
> All other post prison through finding Alexandria events follow canon (aside from Carol not needing to assassinate a child).
> 
> Part of me wanted to save Hershel, but I think Beth's final growth to independentadulthood works best with the death of her father.
> 
> Shane and Beth will not find the others right away, instead making their own rambling way north. By the time they reach Virginia, the war with Negan will be underway.
> 
> Glenn will not die in this version of the story. Jury is still out on Abraham, but I might consider other Negan victims instead.
> 
> I said I wouldn't write canon aged Beth with the older characters. However, what's brewing in my head for this story is slow burn, eventual Shane/Beth. In canon, she was 18 at the time of her death at Grady. I'm going to have her be near 18 when the farm fell, so 20 when the story opens. It also helps my brain used the flirtation with Daryl as canon.
> 
> Biscuit is not the only furry friend in the story. I'm laughing because a puppy was requested for the other Bunny and I already had dogs in this one. Lots of fur babies on the Bunny Farm.
> 
> (BetaDaughter in the begin notes is my RL 13 year old. She's a sneaky plot partner folks... )


	7. Time to Walk Away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shane leaves the farm on his own after Rick's ultimatum that he give up rights to the baby in order to stay. Instead of giving into the growing impulse to harm his best friend, he heads north to lose himself hiking the Appalachian Trail.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A Shane character study as he moves away from a mental breakdown instead of toward one.
> 
> As requested by BetaDaughter after she helped me brainstorm for chapters 5 and 6.

_How do you look at the person you love and tell yourself it's time to walk away - Leo, The Vow_

Shane divides his attention between the unguarded shed and the farmhouse as he rechecks that he's packed everything he doesn't want to leave behind. It's not his turn to guard Randall, but whatever endless meeting is happening seems to draw everyone in regardless of responsibility. He doubts the little asshole can get himself out of the restraints Shane put him in without help anyway.

It's another straw on the camel's back for the decision he made on the ride back from trying to dump Randall. The rage that blew through him today, that poisoned his heart and made him actually capable of killing Rick? He isn't risking that again.

The darker part of him that's been dominating his emotions lately hates that once again, Rick is everyone's golden boy. Everything he did to keep Carl, Lori, and the others alive is swept away under the boyish smile and Andy Griffith posture his brother mimicks so well. Shane has never been capable of that sort of sweetness, and as irritating as he finds Andrea, she's right about one thing. He lacks in presentation.

In a different situation, maybe he could salvage things and shoehorn himself back into the only place Rick can accept for him after the disastrous affair with Lori. Eventually, even Lori would forgive him and stop the mercurial swings between acceptance and hatefulness. But in less than eight months, there's going to be newborn who will inevitably look too much like him for Rick and Lori to maintain the fantasy they're crafting.

Shane's been thinking he should leave for a while, and tonight, while everyone is distracted, he's going to make his move. No Andrea to beg to go along. No Lori or Rick to blow hot and cold about him staying.

No Carl to tip the scales because he honestly believes these people are going to get the boy killed. Neither parent pays attention to where the kid is, caught up in the drama Shane is a key part of.

Shouldering the duffel and his Mossberg, he digs the keys to the Hyundai out of his pocket and drops them in the driver's seat of the car. He originally got the car running to take with him, but something about it sits wrong after he stayed longer than he intended. The folks he's leaving behind can use it, and he doesn't have to remember the other mistakes he made, like letting Andrea climb into his lap that day.

Shane is past Daryl's camp when he hears the farmhouse door slam. Looking back over his shoulder, he sees Dale striding furiously on a trajectory that will lead him toward Shane. He guesses the old man lost his argument about retaining their humanity. It's ironic that everyone is shifting to Shane's opinion now that he's thrown in the towel.

Dale spots him and calls out. Shane isn't sure why he hesitates, but he does, waiting on the old man to catch up. Standing there in a field under the light of the still rising moon, he watches as Dale scans his bag and gun and sighs.

"So it's come to that?" Dale asks, sounding sad instead of relieved, surprising Shane. After the confrontation about him holding the gun on Rick, he expected the moral authority of the group to be grateful he's banishing himself.

Shane shrugs, pushing aside the confusion the older man causes. "Don't try and convince me you want me to stay, Dale. We both know you're just waiting on me to finally lose what marbles I have left."

To his credit, the old man looks a little ashamed. "Why like this, slipping away in the dark?"

The bitter laugh makes Shane's chest ache. "Because Rick won't allow me to leave peaceably, even though he wants me gone more than any other person in the place. I'm an obligation to keep around so he can prove he's the better man."

The muscle to do the dirty work Rick flinches away from, just like their entire law enforcement partnership. Shane is the one with two justified shootings on his record before Rick finally couldn't avoid it the day he got shot. It's not that his brother wouldn't have his back, but he's much like Dale in his approach to the world.

Not everyone can be saved.

"What about your baby?" 

Shane is surprised to hear Dale acknowledge the child is his. Everyone seems to want to play into Rick and Lori's delusional fiction about the paternity, like anyone with a brain can't do the basic math. He's seen the condemning looks that seem to imply conceiving that child is entirely his fault. Despite his alcohol fueled unforgivable behavior at the CDC, he never touched Lori without her express invitation before Rick's return.

"I was told today that the only way I'm allowed to stay is if I give up all rights to my child, Dale. I can't do that and watch them play happy families with me as the errant stench they can't quite eradicate. Today proved just how much I can't do it."

There was a moment today, where he nearly killed Rick, changing trajectory to smash the window at the last moment. He's not foolish enough not to understand Rick considered leaving him behind. His best friend saved the little pedophile, but nearly left him trapped on that bus in a disaster of Shane's own making.

Dale's astute gaze looks at the damage he bears from the fight with Rick. "Surely, in time, they'll come to their senses. No one can fault how well you cared for Carl."

"One thing I know in this world is Rick Grimes. He won't back down on this one, and next time it all boils over? One of us might end up dead instead of just bloody. What do you think Carl or my child will think of me with Rick's blood on my hands?" Dale has no ready answer for that, so Shane looks back toward the camp. "Do me a favor?"

"If I can." Dale pulls that silly hat of his off his head, worrying at it enough Shane wonders if it'll survive the agitated fidgeting.

"Go take watch. It's not safe to have no one on lookout. And don't tell anyone I'm gone until morning."

"You're absolutely certain of this?" It's been so long since Dale looked at him with kindness that Shane almost doesn't recognize the expression. For a man convinced Shane is a murderous bastard, Dale certainly is more concerned about him than the ones who should be.

"I gotta save myself from going down that path you keep thinking I'm on. I already got one ghost to haunt me the rest of my days. Don't want my brother's, too, and I can't watch him raise my child and not react to that."

The older man nods and offers a hand. Shane surprises himself by shaking it. He watches as Dale treks back to the RV, climbing atop it like he's a hundred years old.

Shane doesn't make it to the treeline undisturbed, because he comes across a walker doing its best to eat a downed cow from Hershel's herd. He knifes the decaying bastard and examines the cow to see how the walker managed to get access to nearly impossible prey. The broken leg provides the clue, with the ground disturbed where the animal stepped into a vole's tunnel.

He leaves the bodies for the others to sort out and keeps heading for the trees. Originally, he planned on heading for the cabin Daryl found Sophia in four days after she went missing and spend the night. But with Dale seeing the direction he went, he changes directions, angling back to the old highway jam that started this chapter of their lives. Rick's just stubborn enough to follow and try to make him return.

There's enough moonlight to navigate with the full moon only a few days past peak. Rather than sleep, he works through part of the jam they didn't scavenge. Supplies back at the farm were still low enough he only took two days worth of food, and most of that not really appropriate for the energy needs of a man his size.

By the time dawn breaks, Shane's killed two stray walkers. He's also found a few pieces of camping gear to replace what he left behind, most importantly, a backpacker's pack that will let him balance weight better than the duffel. The accompanying sleeping bag might be too hot right now, but it'll be better than sleeping on the ground on nights he can't find a place to crash, and the tiny tent will save him some grief when more rain comes as summer passes.

The best find in the truck with the camping equipment is the package of three Lifestraw water filters. With those, he can concentrate the weight he carries more on food and less on water. Water sources are all over Georgia, but drinking straight from them was risky even before dead bodies are traveling everywhere.

Repacking everything into the pack takes longer than he likes, but piss poor planning is what kept the group dealing with one disaster after another, and he no longer has anyone to watch his back. No matter that he chose this solo path, it's still going to be a constant consideration. How he travels, how he sleeps, even how he takes a damnes shit - everything will be on alert.

There's so much food he actually had a choice in what he takes along. He concentrates on the lighter items like breakfast bars and oatmeal packets, a task made easier by the pouches of freeze dried camping food already in the pack. When he gets down to the canned goods, he leaves the lower nutrition items like corn and English peas, selecting canned meats, fish, beans, and fruit. He'll eat those first, saving the lighter weight items for later. There's a travel can opener in his pack, so he doesn't have to dull his knife to access the cans.

The day is already humid and ticking toward hot when he shoulders the pack. His old Army surplus duffel is wrapped around the sleeping bag and secured at the base of the pack. He could probably get one of the vehicles at the edge of the jam running, but that limits him to the roads and a lot of idle time behind the wheel.

With no real destination in mind, he doesn't want or need the time sitting still. Hiking will exhaust his body and perhaps his mind, if he's lucky. Years of allowing the illusion of being a thoughtless jock sidekick secondary to Rick's sweeter friendly neighborhood protector weigh heavy on him now that it's no longer necessary.

He toys with the idea of going home to King County, but there's always the possibility Rick will boomerang back there. He always had stronger ties there than Shane. Something he discarded from the pack catches his eye, brightly colored brochures aimed at tourists.

He picks up the Appalachian Trail planner from the pile and flips through it. There are other materials about the hike, and he wonders why someone who had this level of planning and resources is headed in the wrong direction for the mountains. Maybe the missing man was going to find a loved one or companion.

The booklets give him an idea, a goal. He remembers joking that one day he would take a sabbatical and hike the trail from Georgia to Maine. It is a trip that took half a year, back when the world was stable. Now? Who knows.

Heading north into higher elevation and colder climates seems a bit crazy on the surface. The hike is one you're supposed to start in the spring, to complete it before winter seizes control of the mountains. But he's got no deadlines to meet or people to return to. It just means he might have to hole up for the winter and continue on when the snow melts.

He doesn't have Daryl Dixon's level of skill in the woods, but few people live and breathe the woods the way that man does. But he isn't the townie Rick is either. His partner can fish, but Rick's only talent with firearms is what he had to learn for work. Shane knows how to hunt, fish, and forage enough to round out packaged food, when it's just himself he's responsible for.

With a glance toward the water truck he remembers from their first day here, Shane sighs and sets off for the long hike north to the Chattahoochee National Forest and the beginning of something in his life that doesn't revolve around Rick Grimes and a false dream of a family designed to drive him insane.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Intended to be Shane/Jesus by BetaDaughter's request.
> 
> The Appalachian Trail starts in north Georgia and at one point, crosses into the very backyard of Hilltop's setting. Expect at least a few chapters of Shane's solo journey.
> 
> The request also asks that at minimum Hershel and Merle survive the Woodbury/prison arc. I figure if I'm going to twist things that far, Lori and T-Dog will also survive. Dale's death has already been thwarted. As usual, Sophia, Andre, etc survive.
> 
> Eventually the prison will fall and our adventurers will make their way north and encounter Aaron and later Jesus and one long lost deputy.
> 
> In keeping with the canine companion theme, Shane won't walk all the way to Virginia alone.
> 
> It will not be a Negan storyline, focusing less on war and more on reconnecting with family.


	8. Dragons Can Be Beaten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Character divergences for a Bite Immunity story request featuring Shane and Beth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It was requested to see a sample of what I deem a 'rough out', short pieces I write to establish a character's AUness in my head for a story. These are Shane and Beth's.
> 
> Further notes below.
> 
> As requested by WalkerBethG, also incorporates IfWishesWereHorses Eugene has the cure request.

_Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten - Neil Gaiman_

Shane is groggy, fighting his way past pain and confusion. His mind feels stuck in a loop of those hours and days after Rick was shot, where he wished it were him instead. Something's wrong with that sluggish idea, and he fights with whatever it is making his arm ache.

"Hey, deputy, you can't pull out your IV."

His wrist is seized in a gentle, but firm, grip. He blinks, vision finally clearing as a pretty blonde girl comes into view. "They hiring baby nurses now?"

She giggles and shakes her head, letting go of his wrist now that he is more aware of his surroundings. "My sister asked me to sit with you while she ran to the restroom."

As the fog of leftover painkillers recedes, Shane's memories trickle back. The pretty deer that let Carl get nearly close enough to touch. But then there was the flash of movement, the gun being raised, and no time to do anything but tackle the boy.

Followed by searing pain and the inability to breathe. Rick's pale, terrified face above his in a terrible mirror of that day by the highway. The room clearly isn't a hospital, but he doesn't remember being brought here.

The girl smiles brightly. "I'm Beth. My daddy operated on you."

"Where is everyone?"

"Supper, downstairs. I brought Maggie's plate." Beth points to the side table, where a plate of food reminds Shane's stomach it's ravenous and nauseous at the same time.

"He's awake?" The new voice drags Shane's attention from the blonde to a brunette in the doorway.

Beth rolls her eyes before turning to Maggie. "Far as I can tell."

"I'll go get Daddy."

"Sure, leave the one with no training and go play messenger."

Shane chuckles, even though it makes his chest ache and protest. "Logic ain't her strong point?"

Beth just smiles serenely. "Maggie's not much on patients that can talk back. She's Daddy's veterinary assistant."

That's the best irony, Shane thinks. Get shot in the woods by a careless hunter, and get patched up by a damned vet. "Least he ain't a proctologist."

That sends the girl into a fit of giggles, but further jokes are curtailed by the arrival of an older man in a starched shirt and suspenders, Rick hot on his heels.

~*~*~*~*~

Beth thumps into the chair next to Shane on the porch, feeling grumpier than usual. "Boys are stupid."

Shane closes the Sudoku puzzle book and nods. "I can't exactly argue with that, most days. Is this all boys or just a specific one?"

See, that response is why Beth tromped off to the porch when Jimmy made her so angry she couldn't keep hold of Daddy's teachings. She knows Jimmy didn't grow up with all the advantages she did. It's why he's here instead of with family, because her Daddy would never turn someone in need away.

She knew Shane would be out front, part of his recovery being mobile more each day. He can't go far, not with everyone still on tenterhooks about the fact that he had a collapsed lung and Daddy still isn't sure he found all the bone fragments from the rib that got shattered.

"I broke up with him like five times, and he doesn't believe me. It's stupid, because he wouldn't care if there were other girls our age here." Geez, what Beth wouldn't give for Sophia to be older or Maggie younger.

"You told your daddy he isn't listening?" Shane's expression is starting to cloud over.

"It's not bad like that," she hastens to explain. Beth's irritated with her ex-boyfriend, but he's not that kind of bad. "But I did lock him in the chicken coop. By accident."

Shane studies her for a minute, shifting in his seat. He must trust her judgement, since the anger fades, which is nice. He quirks a brow. "Accident, huh?"

"Yeah."

He doesn't chide her that it's unkind or silly, just grins and points to the book she started reading to him when he was mostly confined to bed. "Leave him there for a chapter or two?"

Beth smirks, and as she opens the book to the next chapter, she wonders for the first time if maybe he could help her with another dilemma. He's been out in the world and saw it fall. She thinks he might know way more than her Daddy hiding on this farm about the difference between sickness and monsters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is about 700 words, and the scenes probably wouldn't appear in the same chapter. I don't think either would be first chapter either.
> 
> Biggest thing is to establish the path divergences: Shane took the bullet instead of Carl, and because she survived the bite, Beth's no longer as innocent and biddable as she originally was.
> 
> This will be a brother/sister type relationship, not romantic. Eugene & co will arrive much earlier, looking for the CDC. 
> 
> Primary POV: Shane (Beth as needed)
> 
> Pairings: Shane/Maggie, background Glenn/Rosita, Michonne/Daryl, Abe/Carol, No Beth Pairing, Beth & Rosita friendship. Rick & Shane fix-it.
> 
> Background & Request: Beth is bitten but immune prior to Rick's group arriving. It is kept secret from the group. Otis accidentally shoots Shane in the woods searching for Sophia. Beth develops mentor/friendship with Shane during his recovery and tells him about her immunity after the barn. Eugene really has a cure, but needs someone who is immune. Eugene's group encountered post-farm, and Michonne & Andre (13) are part of the group. Beth & Michonne mentorship. Abe's kids live. Various strays (Merle, Morgan) show up near end in DC. No Randall, Woodbury, Negan, etc. No Judith. Dogs: Maggie's dog is a merle Australian Shepherd named Noelle. Beth's dog is a Aussie/Husky mix named Julliard.


	9. At Your Own Reckoning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five years after his divorce from Lori, Rick leaves King County for Atlanta when Lori gets a job offer she can't pass up. With Shane already moving to the Atlanta area to for his fiance, there's nothing keeping Rick in King County. The new county is a long overdue promotion, leading him to meeting Amanda Shepherd just as she takes the plunge into being the mole to uncover dirty cops in APD.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rough Outs for character establishment (drabbles).
> 
> As requested by inkribbon.

_And above all things, never think that you're not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. My belief is that in life people will take you at your own reckoning - Isaac Asimov_

"From the look in your face, I would think you are marching to your doom, not a perfectly nice apartment," Shane intones as he reaches out to lift the end of the sofa.

"I haven't lived in an apartment since college. It's a little weird." Rick lifts his end of the sofa, following Shane off the moving truck and letting the younger man lead.

"Considering you're the only man I know that kept his house in his divorce, count yourself lucky."

"That's only because Lori didn't want to live in my mother's former home the rest of her life." The house in King County isn't sold, just leased to a young newlywed deputy, thus the reason Rick has an apartment and not a condo or house moving close to Atlanta. 

At least the five years since have let him mostly pay off the mortgage he put on the house to give Lori her court ordered share. That's still a sticking point for him every time he makes the mortgage payment and then meets Shane and his fiance for a Sunday barbecue. Trust his former partner to date Lori's feminist shark of a divorce lawyer.

They thump the sofa against a living room wall. "Least you have a garage here for the Mustang. No more car covers to keep the tree sap off the paint."

"There is that. Where did Carl slip off too?" The seventeen year old is supposed to be helping them unload, but he carried a box up and disappeared.

"You got him a room with a balcony that overlooks the pool and you hafta ask that, brother?"

Rick just laughs and follows his best friend back downstairs. They haven't been partners in years, having been separated by promotions out of the patrol division before Rick's divorce was even final. But the last year, after Shane tapped out his ability for promotion in King County and jumped ship to another county entirely for the next one? He admits it's been lonely. At least now they're back in the same county, even if entirely different divisions. The fact that Shane technically outranks him is still weird though.

Now he just has to rebuild his relationship with Carl before the boy goes off to college and the chance is lost.

~*~*~*~*~

Amanda cuts around the house to the side gate, unlatching it and taking time to pet the overly friendly walker hound lurking just inside. She sets the shopping bag of chips and dip down on the patio table and greets Daryl where he's manning the grill. 

"Made it before the food for once. Not bad, officer."

"Just for that, I'm giving your hello hug to my niece instead. Where is she?"

"Inside changing into her swimsuit." He points with his tongs at the tiny toddler pool on the grass just off the patio. It's a new house for her foster brother and his wife, more or less, since they've only been living this close to Amanda for two months now. Now visits can actually work around her shifts, instead of having to decline because King County is just too far away sometimes.

“You should get a membership at a pool as much as she loves the water.”

“Is that a hint to join that fancy athletic club of yours?” Daryl asks.

“Might as well. It’s not like you can’t afford it nowadays.” She smiles at him and nudges his shoulder. “We’re not broke as hell foster kids anymore, now are we?”

“Guess we haven’t been that for a long time now,” he admits. “Grab yourself a beer out of the cooler, if you want. “Merle will be by with the kids in about half an hour.”

That’ll never get old, Daryl’s older brother settled with kids, a wife, and a stable, legal business. She can still remember that those two boys being shown into the foster home of stern Mrs. McGinley. Daryl was in shock, withdrawn and trying desperately not to cry over his mother’s death in the house fire. Merle was defiant, already being written off as a lost cause by most adults around him, but Mrs. McGinley took him in anyway.

Amanda’s just glad that when the ugly rage born of sixteen years of Will Dixon’s unkind hand finally boiled over for Merle and landed him in juvie long enough to age out of foster care, the woman didn’t throw in the towel on Daryl, too.

“Auntie!” She’s tackle hugged around the knees by two year old Naomi. 

“Hey, baby girl. You ready for your pool?” she asks, picking the toddler up for a hug and grinning as she nods and points to the Dora the Explorer tankini she’s wearing. She gives Amanda a sloppy wet kiss on the cheek before wriggling to be put down so she can run off to splash into the water.

“Lori not coming out?” For the most part, she likes Daryl’s wife. At first, they seemed a little too odd couple to work, but it’s been four years now, three of them married, and she can admit the fidgety woman suits her brother well.

The sheepish look on her brother’s face pretty much tells her before he opens his mouth. “Remember how she couldn’t stand the smell of cooking meat when she got pregnant with Naomi?”

“Really?” She can’t not hug him, grinning even though it pushes the issue festering in the back of her mind even further from sharing it with Daryl.

He’s spent a lot of years shedding the damage and reputation that comes from being a Dixon and staying firmly on the good side of the law. Even hinting to him that she thinks she’s stumbled into a nest of vipers pretending to be officers of the law seems cruel. He won’t like her not sharing her worries, but maybe it’s best, for now at least, to just keep it to herself.

~*~*~*~*~

Beth is hot despite the air condition of the bar, partly because she’s been run off her feet all damn night. Although officially, she’s hired as a bartender, she’s still learning that part of the job, so when they’re packed to standing room only like tonight, she ends up as a server instead, running food and drinks out to the tables. Perspiration is making her red polo cling to her back, and she’s grateful for the thin material allowing some air circulation.

Sliding the baskets of loaded nachos in front of the two off duty firemen, she absentmindedly smiles at the flirty thank yous from both men. It’s a constant, the innuendo or flirting, but ninety percent is fairly innocent, just men and sometimes women liking to blow off a little steam after long shifts. Her boss warned her it would happen, and he puts a stop to any that really cross the line, if the healthy sprinkling of off duty cops or other first responders don’t step in first.

A table calls out for a fresh pitcher of beer, and she nods, snagging the old pitcher and clearing two now empty tables on the way back to the bar. The waitressing part is easy enough, since it doesn’t differ much from the regular restaurants. She tips them into the bus cart to roll into the kitchen in a minute and puts in the request for the pitcher. Leaning against the end of the bar to watch as Merle selects the appropriate draft, she gives a startled meep when a big hand lands firmly against her right ass cheek, cupping it firmly.

The immediate elbow to her left dislodges the hand with prejudice, and she finds herself facing not a random drunk asshole, but one of the off duty cops. Those are unmistakable, even in civilian clothes, just by the way they hold themselves. This one’s new, a sour looking man she hasn’t seen in here before, but she’s only been working here two weeks.

“Now, pretty thing, don’t be rude to those who serve and protect.”

The sheer nerve of him implying grabbing her ass is some sort of benefit for wearing a badge makes her cringe. “Sorry, officer,” she says, emphasizing his title. “I’m taken.”

She isn’t, but sometimes that back off the worst of the handsy types. Seems many men don’t really like to be seen as intruding on another man’s territory.

“Can’t no boy give you what I can.”

“Gorman.” Merle’s voice is cold and gravely as he sets the pitcher down on the lower level of the bar for Beth. “Leave the girl be.”

“Now, Dixon, you know crossing the law is a real bad thing for a man of your history.”

There’s something ugly in the cop’s voice now that makes Beth’s skin crawl worse than him touching her did. She hates the idea that her boss is being threatened for something in his past because of her.

“Girl’s taken. Didn’t take you for a poacher.”

Something about that word makes Gorman straighten up, looking to Beth assessingly. “Your wife know you’ve got a pretty side piece?”

The careful way that Merle reaches out to pull Beth behind the bar amps up her sense of something dangerous here. “Didn’t say she was mine. Remember my nephew?”

“Your brother’s stepson?”

“That’s the one. His daddy’s a cop, too. Just moved up this way for the county.”

Beth puts two and two together and figures she’s about to get a boyfriend about twice her age from the sound of it. As long as he stays pretend and far away from Beth, she isn’t going to object.

“Remember you saying he had a thing for coeds.” Gorman laughs, and the slimy nature of it makes her feel like she needs a shower.

“Yeah, he does. Why else you think I would hire a girl with no experience tending bar? It was a favor.”

It was a favor, although not to this unknown cop that likes girls Beth’s age. She eases around Merle, who slides the pitcher her way. “Take that out and then go pull more orange juice from the cooler, Bethie.”

She nods, taking the out when it’s offered. Maybe this job isn’t worth it, with a man like that around that Merle can’t seem to throw out like the other assholes. But the tips are phenomenal. Working here means she doesn't have to take out student loans to finish out her last year of college and might even get some money put toward graduate school. Hopefully the smokescreen Merle gave her will be enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As with prior Rough Outs/Drabbles, and the scenes probably wouldn't appear in the same chapter and aren't guaranteed to make the final cut. Beth's POV may or may not stay in the story.
> 
> Atlanta PD Corruption AU (requested by inkribbon)  
> Primary POV: Rick & Amanda Shepherd  
> Pairings: Rick/Amanda  
> Background Pairings: Lori/Daryl, Shane/Michonne  
> Background & Request: Divorced Rick, years later. No Judith, no affairs. Rick with a therapist due to divorce and Lori & Shane moving on with lives and Carl growing up while he feels stagnated at 40. Carl age 17, final year of school. Amanda as a foster kid who shared a foster mother with Daryl after his mother's death. Include Beth in some fashion.


	10. Love Mingled with Grief

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Teenage Beth Greene's psychic gift seems more of a curse when she witnesses her mother's impending death, and Annette and Shawn's deaths send the whole family into a tailspin. Meanwhile, the sole survivor of the Wizarding World relies on her own damaged gift to try to puzzle out why she's lost in the American South.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First chapter, rough draft.
> 
> As requested by DirectorDanvers, combining her psi powered Beth with an HP crossover idea I had stashed away.

_The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater - J. R. R. Tolkien_

Beth shakes her head to clear the vision that feels like it's turned her blood to ice. She knows she's frozen, and her grip is painful on Otis's bare forearm where she caught herself to stop falling. The farmhand looks worried. 

"You having one of your episodes, Bethie? Do I need to get your daddy?"

She shakes her head urgently. Since Hershel didn't believe her about her mother's illness being dangerous, she isn't inclined to trust him with this. All he does is mourn now, when maybe they could have fixed it. Instead they lost Shawn, too.

At least Beth didn't see that one to play in technicolor in her visions.

"Otis? If someone asks you to fetch medical supplies today, don't go to the field hospital at the high school. Just don't." She puts all the urgency she can into her voice, squeezing his arm.

The big man looks fearful for a moment, but he nods. "I believe you, even if some don't want to right now. Can get supplies at your daddy's office, I bet."

The support in his earnest expression warms her heart. She flings her arms around him in an impulsive hug. "Please stay safe, Otis."

The rest of the vision flickers in her head as the farmhand moves toward the pastures to check on the cattle. The strongest parts are always the person she's touching, but sometimes other related events intermingle. Otis dying on the ground, betrayed by an apologizing man she can't see clearly, doesn't make a lot of sense, but the medical supplies do.

There's a spike in urgency on the first part of the vision. It calls to her, burning through her brain like a migraine. As she hurries toward the house, she sees Maggie's car leaving. Her heart sinks as she sees Paul at the wheel. A supply run, taking her only true ally away, since even if Maggie stayed, she thinks Beth should try to ignore the visions right now for their father’s sake.

Pressure builds in her head, and she whimpers in pain. It summons Rocky, who nudges at her hand. She kneels and hugs the dog close, stroking his smooth fur. "We gotta go into the woods, boy."

He understands 'woods' well enough, because he looks out to the treeline as if to say ‘what are we waiting for’. With a look toward the house, she abandons the idea of trying to convince her father to believe. Since her mother's death, he sees her ability as a curse.

If he stops her, the vision will build and build until the crescendo is watching a little girl die as if she were right there beside her. After the terror of seeing Annette's last minutes, both before and when they happened, she never wants that to happen again. Unseen by the adults who might stop her, Beth and Rocky make it to the cover of the woods.

She knows these woods like the back of her hand, spending hours exploring with her siblings. More Paul than Maggie or Shawn, with the age gap too great on the older two for the last couple of years. But Paul always had time for her. College didn't turn him into an insufferable adult who didn't have time for her like it did Maggie. She didn't need to be told that Shawn's 'difficulties' were of the kind they ran Just Say No campaigns in school about. She understands what an addict is, after all, even if her family tries to shelter her from it.

As her sneakered feet carry her further into the trees, seeking the sunlit clearing she knows well because of the lightning split oak, the pressure in her head begins to ease. Rocky yips softly, sensing the change.

The red and tan Kelpie is a trained service dog, purchased years ago as a pet when Paul was first adopted, but when the visions started, medical testing ruled them seizures. Rocky’s ability to sense them as they started got him the training to be her service dog, accompanying her everywhere, even at school. The visions may not be true seizures, but the dog still alerts to them, even in differing stages like now.

The clear image of the terrified, lost girl who seems to be Beth's age is fading, gaining that translucent edge that means she's close to fixing what's wrong.

Beth feels terror shoot through her when she hears growling and sees the walker menacing the girl of her vision. With a snarl of his own, it's Rocky who saves the girl. He hamstrings the walker, toppling the tall once-man and giving Beth a chance to snatch the girl's arm.

"Run! Run as fast as you can," she urges, dragging the girl with her. Rocky circles around them, growling. 

They flee as the vision of the blonde flickers and disintegrates to white noise in her head with the girl’s hand clasped firmly in Beth’s.

~*~*~*~

Luna’s damaged gift has always bothered her, but never more once the world met with a calamity that overcast anything the Wizarding World ever predicted happening. Now, the bubbles of pressure that build in her mind are harder to deal with, since she never gets the vision that should accompany them. The head injury she suffered the day her mother died, leaving a nine-year-old caught in the backlash of a botched experimental spell, warped her magic in ways that weren’t always clear until she was an adult.

She presses a heavily scented handkerchief to her nose, blotting the nosebleed. Whatever she’s trying to prevent was easier when she could apparate, but the plague that destroyed the Wizarding World in ways no Dark Lord ever managed sent magic into a tailspin. The only reliable magic Luna can access right now is her innate abilities that muggles would deem psychic powers and anything involving plants. They don’t seem to be affected by the magical drain, so she is grateful that herbology and potions were always among her strong points.

Something has the hordes of the dead in Atlanta stirred up. Luna moves from rooftop to rooftop, dropping into alleys and scaling fire escapes and downspouts, letting the pressure in her mind lead her in the right direction. She finally reaches a building near the centerpoint of whatever is agitating the dead. Hearing gunfire from the next building over, she ducks behind one of the big air conditioning units and observes.

The fight on the roof across the street makes her itch to intervene, but when she goes to leave cover, it feels like her head might split open. Relaxing back against the machinery, she pants through the pain and waits out the nosebleed. 

Okay. Not time yet.

It is almost physically painful to watch the man’s terror as he realizes he’s being left behind, abandoned by his fellows in their understandable animalistic urge to save their own skin. As the stranger howls out his rage and fear, she tries moving again. The pressure eases almost entirely, so she knows this is why she’s here.

Looking over the edge of the roof, she sighs. “Seriously, this is not the time to be without magic.” 

If she’s really, really fast, she can access that fire escape, but it’ll take literally sliding down five stories on a downspout that looks like it’s better days were before she was even born. Trusting the ‘sheer dumb luck’ that seems to cling to her in the apocalypse, Luna grips the downspout and eases her weight over the roof’s ledge and prays Harry’s idea of guardian angels exist.

Still stirred up by the noise and activity on the other side of the building, the dead are actually distracted enough that they don’t notice her in time. She’s two meters off the ground and climbing fast by the time they realize they let a meal escape like a squirrel climbing a tree.

“Things really have gone pear shaped on you, haven’t they?” Luna says, giggling when the man nearly has a heart attack at her seeming to appear out of nowhere. All his focus was on the door, which seems to be ineptly chained somehow, so she simply walked up beside him.

“I don’t know you, girlie, but I won’t say no if you can get me out of these cuffs.” The way he’s blinking, she suspects he isn’t entirely sure she’s not a hallucination. That’s okay by her, because she often sees things no one else does. She would wonder herself, if she were in his predicament.

Since whatever violence fueled him earlier seems to have faded, she kneels on the gritty surface of the roof and takes his wrist gently in both her hands. He’s damaged the skin badly yanking on the metal, but she ignores that in favor of studying the lock. “On the telly, they always show hair grips being used to unlock these. Suppose we can give that a try.”

The burly man doesn’t object when she plucks one out of her hair. She’s especially fond of the ones tucked in her braids today, with their sparkly fake gemstones that look like sapphires. The task proves easier than she actually thought, since she expected the stuff from the telly to be crap, actually. “There you go, free as a birdie.”

“Hate to tell you, blondie, we ain’t birdies to just fly away.”

Luna sighs, because she knows that. “It would be rather nice, wouldn’t it, if we could just hop off the roof and fly away. If we wait a bit, they’ll get bored and wander off. Then we can just scamper down the fire escape I came up and walk away. Those people with you made it rather more complicated than it should be.”

“None of them have the patience to wait it out.” He rubs at his face, sniffing hard, but he accepts the water bottle she offers him from her backpack. “Just how old are you, girl?”

Aware that most people mistake her for being much, much younger than she actually is, Luna flashes him her most winsome smile. “Over thirty, not that you’ll believe me.”

He just shakes his head, concentrating on the water. She retrieves a jar of healing ointment from her pack, not bothering with anything to clean his wrist. It won’t matter, not like muggle medicine. “Give me your wrist, please?”

Eyeing the jar in her hand, he shrugs and offers it. What she’s about to do is a risk. It won’t fix him completely, not like it would a wizard or even a squib, but it will help faster than anything he’s ever seen. But her gift led her here, to him, so she is going to take the chance. Slathering a good smear of the ointment around his entire wrist, she watches his eyes widen as the torn and bleeding skin knits itself back together. It’s a raw, delicate patch of new skin, one he can easily rip right back open over the next day or two until his body fully takes over the healing process.

“Part of me wants to say I’m higher than a damned kite and you’re still a hallucination,” he mutters, blue eyes narrowing as he looks from his wrist to her. “But I saw my great granny do similar. People called her a witch for it.”

Luna smiles sadly. This man’s family wouldn’t be the first to have magic die out over time. The grandmother could have been a squib, too, since she knows a few who can manage basic potions that rely more on the ingredients’ magic than the potioneer’s. “She might have been one.”

“What do I call you, witch girl?”

That makes her giggle. “Not that. My name is Luna.”

“Merle.” He surprises her by offering his hand. Good manners didn’t strike her as his cup of tea, but she takes it and smiles.

“The blackbird and the moon. Sounds like a children’s book,” she muses. “Do you want to return to your people?”

Merle blinks a bit at her segway about the meaning of their names, but shakes his head. “Not really my people, but my baby brother is back at camp. Need to go shake him free of them.”

“We’ll go find him then.”

“You got people, Moonchild?”

The question, innocent as it is, causes a wave of grief to crash through her. She doesn’t, not really, not anymore. While a small percentage of the muggle world population seems to be immune to the deadly plague, it wiped out the wizarding population so swiftly she imagines there would have been disasters all over if the muggles weren’t distracted by their own societies crumbling. When she fled London, Diagon Alley was fully exposed, all protections hiding it gone along with the people they protected from discovery.

She got sick herself, but Harry did something to save her. Luna still isn’t sure what it was, but the ritual when magic was failing ended with her being hurled through the aether as bodiless as apparating or using a portkey, to appear in a refugee camp in an American state she never thought to visit again. Only instinct and her gift nearly splitting her head with the urgency led her to snatch the crying toddler from death.

That memory reminds her that she’s not alone. “Yeah, but we have a three-year-old with us, so we can’t both go out into the city.”

“Well, my brother’s a grown ass man. He can look after himself while you get back to your people. You don’t gotta follow me around.”

Luna tests out the idea of separating from the man and feels a headache beckon and fishes out her handkerchief for the resultant specks of blood. “That would be bad. I think we’re supposed to stay together for now.”

“You sick?” He sounds concerned, not scared, so she shakes her head.

“Fixing your wrist isn’t the only thing I can do, but the other is a bit messed up.”

“Can’t have my savior wandering about having an episode like that to get eaten by dead shitheads. Assholes that left me would take in people with a kid. They’re soft hearted like that.”

She smiles a little. “Okay. We’ll find my friend and her son and then we go. Easier anyway, since we have a car, right?”

Merle’s booming laughter stirs up the dead blocked at the stairwell door, but Luna just grins as the pressure pops like a bubble on the wind, goal reached.

~*~*~*~

Paul frowns as Maggie picks through things in the pharmacy as if it was an everyday shopping trip. “This is stupid,” he grumbles, twisting his hair up into a bun and securing it. The pharmacy is sweltering in the summer heat, and frankly, he’s damned tired of coming into town every other day or so like the world still has cashiers and cops to patrol what supplies they take.

“Daddy says we can’t take it all. What if other survivors need it?”

“Dammit, Maggie, when was the last time we saw someone that wasn’t our own people? All this nitpicky rule of Dad’s does is put us at risk every time we come out. Don’t see him out here seeing what the world is really like.”

His sister sighs. “He’s grieving, Paul. He lost Mom and Shawn.”

“So did we, Maggie! He won’t even look at Beth anymore. It’s bullshit.”

Being adopted by the Greenes when he was nearly too old to consider it was one of the best things that ever happened to Paul after more than a decade in foster care. He wasn’t even lucky enough to land in actual homes most of those years, getting regulated to group homes with even less care and attention than a couple paid to look after state wards. A chance encounter with itty bitty Beth Greene and the ‘seizure’ she had at the Atlanta Zoo changed his entire life. From what he knows of his youngest adopted sister’s gift, it didn’t just change his life, it saved it.

Watching her fold in on herself the longer their father sticks his head in the sand and insists that Annette and Shawn aren’t actually dead is like having his heart carved right out of his chest.

“I know.” Maggie still sticks to the strict rules laid down by Hershel, taking only the basics they need, even as Paul guards the door and watches her back. “But he isn’t going to listen to us.”

“And if those dead things get loose? What if one of them bites Beth? Or Patricia when she’s feeding them?”

“I don’t know!” 

The stressed shout is clamped down by Maggie slapping a hand over her own mouth. She tears up and he feels like an asshole for making his sister cry. With a glance at the empty street, he leaves the door and goes to hug her tightly. “I’m sorry, Mags.”

Maggie nods against his shoulder, and he tries to remember that she lost her best friend when Shawn died keeping Annette from devouring her own family. He and Beth hadn’t been at the house when it happened, since he took his sister on a hunt with Rocky, trying to get her away from the oppressive atmosphere of the house. Hershel refused to believe Beth’s vision predicted their mother’s death, stubbornly arguing that the cannibalism on the news was drug related.

Even as Shawn fought to keep Annette away from Patricia and eventually got her in the barn, Maggie witnessed it, while Paul knelt in the woods beside a sobbing Beth. When he carried the exhausted girl back to the farm, he knew when he saw Otis sitting on the steps crying softly exactly what Beth saw and couldn’t tell him for the tears. Shawn died, burning up with fever, seventeen hours after his mother.

Paul placed his brother’s still human body in the barn at Hershel’s orders, but he’s regretted it ever since.

“We’ll figure something out. Maybe Patricia won’t tattle if I just take care of them? Lay them to rest?”

When Maggie moves away and wipes at her face, he knows she’s considering it. “Do you think you could do it quietly and safely?”

“Yeah. I’ve been thinking on it for weeks now. Frog gig from the loft will work. I can reach their heads and never be in reach.”

“Okay. When we get back, I’ll suss out Patricia and make sure she’ll keep quiet. We can set Bethie on Otis, because you know he’d set the damn barn on fire, Daddy’s good opinion be damned, if she asked him to. He can just tell Daddy he isn’t finding any new ones in the woods like you do.”

Paul smiles sheepishly. “Realized I’ve been putting them down when he sends me hunting?”

“Yeah. So would Daddy if he got his head out of his ass, but we won’t make it obvious.” Maggie glares at the pharmacy shelf. “Is there still a display for those reusable shopping bags? I say we clear out everything we might need into those, and keep my bag for Daddy’s shopping list only. We can hide it in the trunk.”

Finally freed of his sister’s insistence they follow Hershel’s orders to the letter in town, he grins as he does as instructed. As he promised Beth, once they swayed Maggie to the right side of things, their lives will get better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Greene Farm AU (requested by Director Danvers):  
> Primary POVs: Beth, Paul, and Luna  
> Main Pairings: Beth/Carl, Paul/Glenn, Shane/Luna  
> Background Pairings: Daryl/Maggie, Morgan/Michonne
> 
> Background & Requests: Beth is the adopted daughter of Hershel and Annette Greene, placed with them by her birth mother, Luna Lovegood, and hidden by a spell that even prevents Luna from finding her easily because her life is in danger if she stays in the Wizarding World. Her magic manifests as psychic visions as a small girl, activated by touch if someone is facing deadly peril within a factor of three (3 days, 3 weeks, 3 months). One of her visions saves a teenage Paul Rovia, leading to his adoption by the Greene family. Meanwhile, with the Wizarding World dead, Luna is propelled by Harry's last desperate ritual to find their daughter, a sacrifice eerily similar to Lily Potter's.
> 
> Consider Luna's spell a variant of the Fidelius Charm in HP. Hershel knows Beth is adopted, because he's the Secret Keeper, but Luna and Harry only have the bare minimum of it - that their daughter is alive and safe somewhere. Magic is wonky and nearly gone, with only inborn talents like those of a Seer still usable (Note: avoiding the overpowered fix-it issues of Magic in the ZA) and plant based magics. **Luna will be the only HP character.**
> 
> Beth & Sophia try to find the highway, but it's the wrong one. They find Morgan and Duane instead. Luna, Merle, Michonne, & Andre follow Luna's malfunctioning Seer power to converge on Rick, Shane, and Randall when Shane is trapped in the bus. No CDC. Amy, Jacqui, and Jim survive the quarry attack because Rick's group doesn't encounter the Vatos and is back in time. Beth, Sophia, Carl, and Duane are all 14-15. Luna is 31, Maggie 29, and Paul 22. Carl still gets shot. No Shane/Lori affair. Lori pregnant with Judith pre-ZA.


	11. Hallmark, Georgia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not a rough draft chapter, but a reader participation in world building one. Non-ZA, small town Georgia setting for Dark Tidings' own Hallmark Channel type story series.

Alright, lovely readers, this is something a bit new. I have several non-ZA suggestions in the list, and the one that spawned this is tickling my brain that it could be something more. Call it too much brain white noise from keeping the TV on Hallmark Channel while I write...

I'm going to drag this one separate from Veronica's other Harlequin Rides Again AUs and let it spawn a sticky sweet True Love Awaits type story series. Stories will probably be shorter, 10-20 chapters tops, no more than 50k or so, just like a regular Harlequin novel.

Why this chapter? Well, my lovelies, y'all get to pick the pairings, beyond the ones already set based on the first story.

The only catch is one half of the pairing must own a business on the Historic Courthouse Square, which is the common thread for them all. {Edit update:. Younger pairings like Beth/Enid and Carl/Henry will be the YA subromance series that are children/siblings/etc to Square Folk.} If you've never been to a town with a court house square as a center point, imagine a gorgeous pre-civil war behemoth of a building, surrounded by ancient oaks. Four streets circle the square, each with a row of 1-3 story buildings in long, attached strips. Often a focus of festivals and tourism, it isn't just a typical shopping mall or center.

Now, for our little town, currently called Hallmark as a placeholder that might stick, it's not tiny but not huge. 6,000 people, with new development on the outskirts of town causing growing pains. Geographically, place it in the vicinity of Griffin, GA... Next county over from my setting for fictional King County. The town has its own two-year community college, a small police force of less than twenty officers, the local sheriff's department of three times that size, and sundry other businesses that make the Square Folk squirm as competition. 

The catch on the pairings is that one half must be a shop owner on the square. The other can be a town resident or a newcomer, just otherwise not one of the Square Folk. They can already be married/dating and facing a crisis of their relationship, or former lovers reconnecting. 

NO Negan, Simon, Governor, Alpha, Claimers, (no diehard villains, more or less). No flipping orientation on canon LGBT characters. No teen/adult. No Carl/Beth (I've got too many already). No Glenn/Maggie. 

If for some reason I cannot write a character, pairing, romance idea, I will kindly let you know and work to find an alternative.

Some shops have residential apartments above the shops, and for out little town, they are all at least two story, some shabbier than others. You decide if your Square Folk lives on the square or not and suggest a business name (I reserve the right to suggest/request alternatives).

For your selection, with ones already taken by the first story in italics, and will be updated with additional italics as locations are claimed:

Clockwise from north side of the square:  
1\. _Art Gallery/Studio_ (takes up two shop fronts) - owned by Lori Grimes  
2\. Children's clothing boutique one shop front)  
3\. Real estate office (one shop front)  
4\. _Ice cream/soda shop_ (one shop front) - owned by Glenn Rhee  
5\. Pet shop specializing in fish, birds, and exotics (two shop fronts) 

East Side of Square:  
6\. Theater: three stories, each upper floor has traditional movie theater with current movies. Ground floor has stage presenting local plays. (two shop fronts, no residential area)  
7\. Pizza parlor (one shop front)  
8\. _Beauty salon_ (one shop front) - owned by Rosita Espinosa  
9\. Attorney's office (one shop front)  
10\. Women's clothing boutique (two shop fronts)

South Side of Square:  
11\. Bank, first one in town, would not be an owner but a bank officer as character. (two shop fronts, non-residential)  
12\. _Travel agency_ (one shop front) - owned by Tara Chambler  
13\. Bakery (one shop front)  
14\. Bookstore (one shop front)  
15\. Physicians Office (two shop fronts)

West Side of Square:  
16\. Music Store (two shop fronts) - sells instruments, music, gives lessons, and supplies school band. Beth works here, but not an owner.  
17\. Yoga Studio (one shop front)  
18\. Florist Shop (one shop front)  
19\. Craft supply shop (one shop front)  
20\. _Cafe_ (takes up two shop fronts) - owned by Merle Dixon.

There are other business adjacent to the Square, but these will be our featured places. I will produce a map when the stories begin.

 **Claimed Pairings:**  
Daryl/Lori  
Rick/Jessie  
Merle/Olivia  
Shane/Shawn Greene (the reader who requested this pairing is welcome to claim a Square Shop for Shawn)  
Beth/Enid (LaLaLand)  
Rosita/Glenn (WolfieWalkerPupp & Kylesmom)  
Tara/Maggie (AvengerofSquids)  
Carl/Henry (KungFu101)  


T-Dog & Tyreese Notes:. If claiming them for either half of a couple, please note they will also be artists on the side for Lori's gallery. Both are retired pro football players... Pick your favorite team. Both prior Georgia Bulldogs native to town, come back home after retirement. 

Carol Notes: Ed died/disappeared ages ago, leaving Carol to raise her kids solo (twins Sophia and Henry, maybe older son Benjamin)

Abe Notes: Divorced from Ellen, two kids, past romance with Rosita.

**All shop claims/pairings are first come, first serve by timestamp. If yours dupes another by accidental crossposting, you'll have to reselect.**

Request Format  
Pairing:  
Shop:  
Suggested Shop Name:  
Shop Owner:  
Romance Idea/Background:

AU requested by Veronica that inspired the series:  
Primary POV: Daryl & Lori  
Pairings: Daryl/Lori  
Background Pairings: Shane/Shawn Greene, Rick/Jessie, Merle/Olivia  
Background & Request: Lori is an artist/art gallery owner who recently moved to town with her son in the aftermath of a divorce (flip the affair to Rick & Jessie, not Lori & Shane). Judith already born and Rick's daughter (baby Judith + Daryl cuteness). Daryl gets mistaken for your stereotypical unemployed redneck cause of several suspicious situations but he's a small business owner (tattoo shop just off the square) and volunteer first responder in town. Shane as the uncomfortable, go-between for Lori & Rick's less-than-amicable divorce. Shane in his own relationship, but mistaken as Lori's boyfriend (typical Hallmark Channel/Harlequin mix-ups). Happily married with kids Merle in background. Slow-building romance, class prejudices at play, small town living.

~*~*~*~ Preview ~*~*~*~

Lori stands in her new living room on the third story of the building, looking down at the sleepy town square just now coming to life. She isn't exactly a stranger to this town, because she's sold her art through this gallery for years. But she's never lived here, and more importantly, she just bought out a woman who was a cornerstone of the local merchant association. 

Even though she isn't attempting to take her predecessor's place in that role, being seen as an outsider still makes her nervous. She spent her entire adult life being Rick Grimes's wife from 'out of town', never quite fitting in no matter how hard she tried. A fresh start was what she needed, and more importantly, what her children needed, but it doesn't sooth her anxiety yet.

Dixie wanting to retire coincided beautifully with Lori's divorce settlement arriving. The elderly artist and her lifelong partner were always so kind to Lori. Having her own gallery and studio to give lessons and share her love of art seems like a godsend.

Hell, her therapist encouraged the move, suggesting that Lori needed a real identity for herself that wasn't Rick's wife or Carl and Judith's mother. Lori, at her lowest spirits, adds Oblivious Housewife to that list, because she managed to completely miss her husband's year long affair until circumstances made it impossible for Rick to hide.

Good old King County, always happy to overlook one of their hometown boys' misconduct, still makes her wonder how many knew about it and failed to tell her. Then again, _Shane_ hadn't known, so she thinks Rick hid it damned well. If her husband hadn't fucked up and gotten Jessie pregnant with Lori nearing the last trimester of her pregnancy with Judith, who knows how long she would have stayed in the dark.

She can't even hate Rick for it, because their marriage should have ended probably before Carl started kindergarten. They were both too stubborn to throw in the towel, and both loved Carl too much to be the one to break first. Judith, their sweet and unexpected surprise, looked like she might knot them back together for a few months, but it didn't last.

The mess they face now is of both their making. Carl's rage at his father is slowly fading with time and twice weekly counseling sessions. Lori hopes in another few months, when Judith is weaned and the custody agreement brings in overnight visits for the baby with her father, that Carl will be willing to go, too. At sixteen, his opinion carried a lot of weight with the judge. 

Out on the square, she sees the bright yellow bakery van emerge from a back alley and pass in front of Lori's gallery. Early deliveries, she supposes. Many businesses don't open this early, so at just shy of seven in the morning, she only sees the big Cafe catty-cornered to the gallery and the bakery lit up.

Carl thuds down the stairs, backpack over one shoulder. "Hey, they actually open for breakfast?" he asks, pushing his hair back from his eyes. He needs a haircut soon, she notes idly.

"The bakery or the cafe?" she asks, amused. 

"The cafe. Bet they would have bacon, right?"

Lori laughs, recalling the time or two she grabbed a lunch there when visiting Dixie. "Yeah. It's all bad for your arteries good food there."

Carl starts his junior year at a brand new school today, so why not give him a treat? Scooping tiny Judith out of her playpen, she leads rhe way out onto the Square and the first day of their new life.

**not a Rick bash... Just a complex path to fixing a broken family and rebuilding it.**


End file.
